Adrian Anagnost

My work considers site, space, landscape, and the politics of embodiment in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on Brazil and the United States. My first book project, Spatial Orders, Social Forms, analyzes the aesthetics of space in projects by Brazilian artists, architects, city planners, and politicians from the late 1920s through 1960s. This book touches on key moments in art and architectural history of Brazil, including social control and 1920s-30s urbanization projects, the Ministry of Education building in Rio de Janeiro, the founding of new modern art museums in Brazilian cities of the 1940s and 1950s, theories of the Concrete/Neoconcrete, and the role of race in performance by 1960s avant-garde. The book situates works of Brazilian art and architecture in longer histories of urban space from the colonial era to the 20th century, and poses questions about the phenomenology of political collectivity.

My ongoing research projects include a book on the spatialization of race in Louisiana coastal and riparian landscapes in the context of competing imperialisms (French, Spanish, British, U.S.), and a co-edited volume on mobile and temporary architectures in colonial and imperial contexts. I have also written essays on the site specificity of contemporary participatory art such as Dread Scott’s Slave Rebellion Reenactment (2019); approaches to understanding the architectural settings of works looted from West Africa; expanded conceptions of “American” art with attention to Indigenous archaeology; the temporality of architectures intended for migrants and refugees; DIY environmental design in micro-businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic; European museum collecting practices and ideas of “non-western art”; and the roles of Afro-brasilidade and Indigenismo for the pau-brasil and antropofagia aesthetic movements.