Ana Cristina Perry

Biography

Ana Cristina Perry researches and teaches art history from the 19th century through the present. She teaches thematic courses that trace collective, collaborative, and performative art practices across the world as well as broader surveys looking specifically at the Americas including Latinx artists in the United States and art in Latin America. Her seminars examine how artists and scholars think through and with Puerto Rico since 1898 as well as how artists primarily since the 1990s have used materials and topics of disgust and abjection in their practice. 

Her research examines performance, participation, and installation practices by Latinx artists since the 1960s. Her current project, Raphael Montañez Ortiz and Alternative Spaces, 1962-1972: From Repulsion to Exaltation, examines how the Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz's often erratic and disturbing performances are tied to his curatorial approaches as the first director of El Museo del Barrio. Her research challenges the frequent fracturing in the scholarship of the careers of Latinx artists like Ortiz, whose performances and artistic investigations have been incorporated by the canon, but whose work shaping Latinx cultures and histories remain sidelined. Ortiz, as an artist and a museum director, challenged institutional boundaries and encouraged emotionally invested spectatorship in performances such as his Piano Destruction Concerts, environments like Destruction Room/Brainwash at the Judson Gallery, and the multi-media installation Boricua: Aquí y Allá at the American Museum of Natural History. She has previously published and presented on Dominican American artist Iliana Emilia Garcia and Colombian conceptual artist Bernardo Salcedo. Her research has been supported by the Inter-University Program in Latino Research (IUPLR), the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA).