<p> This dissertation contributes to an understanding of contemporary art practices from Mexico City, as they are received in Mexico and abroad, by interpreting the meaning of local and global sources in recent work shown in Mexico, the U.S., and Europe by three internationally established, contemporary artists from Mexico City: Gabriel Orozco, Carlos Amorales, and Pedro Reyes. These three artists established their careers in the 1990s, when, for the first time, Mexican artists shifted from a national plane to a global realm of operation. Through three case studies of recent bodies of work produced by these artists, I show how each of them engages with both Mexico's artistic lineages and global art currents in ways that bring to light the problem of identity for Mexican artists working internationally. This study explores the specific ways in which each artist deals with Mexican content, in order to discuss how contemporary notions of `Mexican' are framed, misconstrued, and contested in the artworks themselves, and in the critical discourse on these artists, in Mexico and internationally.</p>

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<p> This thesis argues that Mexican painter Enrique Guzm&aacute;n is a central figure in the transition between the Ruptura movement and postmodernism. Construed by many as a surrealist artist, Guzm&aacute;n employs idiosyncratic imagery not to probe inner realities, but to explore themes such as abjection and the fragmentation of self into commodity images. Inhabiting the chasm between an oppressive ultra-conservative provincial culture and the turbulent revolutionary ideology of Mexico City of the sixties and seventies, Guzm&aacute;n articulates, by fusing aesthetic categories such as, among others, the grotesque, the campy and the advertising clich&eacute; and exploring language, paradox and gaze, a deconstruction of cultural and political codes by satirizing their interlocking systems of signs and simulacra, initiating a critique of national and personal identity that will later be developed by the Neo-Mexicanists (Neomexicanistas) into a bold denouncement of sexual, socioeconomic and national marginalization.</p>

<p> David Lamelas&rsquo;s life-long research projects have included examinations of social phenomena. The artist takes interest in the dynamics of mass communication and media, urban mundane activities, and documentary films. He employs the element of time often in the structure of his art as an innovative approach by which to study his subjects. </p><p> I argue that in pairing the element of time with social phenomena, Lamelas exposes how people&rsquo;s perceptions, both the visual experience and the thought processes impacted by these experiences, tend to work, therefore leading viewers to consider systems of knowledge and their own accumulation of knowledge. His artwork provokes viewers to open their minds to new ways of seeing and thinking, stimulates self-awareness, and challenges their concepts of knowledge.</p><p>

<p> Early European travel literature was a prominent source from which information about the New World was presented to a general audience. Geographic regions situated within what is now referred to as Latin America were particularly visible in these accounts. Information regarding the religious customs and styles of dress associated with the indigenous peoples who inhabited these lands were especially curious points of interest to the European readers who were attempting to understand the lifestyles of these so-called &ldquo;savages.&rdquo; These reports, no matter their sources, always claimed to be true and accurate descriptions of what they were documenting. Despite these claims, it is clear that the dominant Western/Christian perspective from which these sources were derived established an extremely visible veil of bias. As a result, the texts and images documenting these accounts display highly flawed and misinformed representations of indigenous Latin American culture. Although it is now understood that these sources were often greatly exaggerated, the texts and images within them are still widely circulated in present-day museum exhibitions. When positioned in this framework, they are meant to be educational references for the audiences that view them. However, museums often condense the amount of information they provide, causing significant details of historical context to be excluded. </p><p> With such considerable omission being common in museum exhibitions, it causes one to question if this practice might be perpetuating the distribution of misleading information. Drawing on this question, I seek, with this research, to investigate how early European representations of Latin American culture in travel literature may be linked to current issues of misrepresentation. Particularly, my research is concerned with finding connections that may be present with these texts and images and the negative aspects of cultural appropriation. Looking specifically at representations of Aztec culture, I consult three texts and their accompanying illustrations from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries to analyze their misrepresentational qualities, and how they differed between time periods and regions. Finally, I use this information to analyze museum exhibition practices and how they could be improved when displaying complex historical frameworks like those of indigenous Latin American cultures.</p><p>

<p> Conceptualized by Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas Jim&eacute;nez (known as Habacuc), <i>Exposici&oacute;n #1</i> [Exposition #1](or its more infamous moniker &ldquo;starving dog art&rdquo;)(2007) operates as a multifarious transgressive work of art. A main point of contention within the artwork is the rumored starvation of a dog during the course of artwork&rsquo;s exhibition. This thesis analyzes Habacuc&rsquo;s proposition within contemporaneous debates around participatory practices and Internet art. This examination is provided in order to present an alternative interpretation of the work relative to the divisive practices of the artist. Similar to other artists working with the period known as postinternet, Habacuc engages in a form of art that is counter-cultural, utilizing misinformation as a catalyst for his viral proposition. While Habacuc employs a strategy of critique throughout his varied oeuvre, <i>Exposici&oacute;n #1,</i> arguably his most complex work to date, wholly demonstrates his approach to the Internet as an intrinsically hybridized, political, and oppositional medium. Within the following chapters I focus on the types of participatory relations being produced within <i>Exposici&oacute;n #1</i> and Habacuc&rsquo;s authorial intent to challenge the principles of emancipation promised in the discourses around participation in art and the Internet as &ldquo;global village.&rdquo; </p><p>

<p> Though alphabetic script had become a prevailing communicative form for keeping records and recounting histories in New Spain by the turn of the seventeenth century, pre-Columbian and early colonial artistic and scribal traditions, including pictorial, oral, and performative discourses still held great currency for indigenous communities during the later colonial period. The pages of a corpus of indigenous documents created during the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries known as the Techialoyan manuscripts abound with vibrantly painted watercolor depictions, alphabetic inscriptions, and vivid invocations of community elders&rsquo; speeches and embodied experiences. Designed in response to challenging viceregal policies that threatened land and autonomy, the Techialoyans sought to protect and preserve indigenous ways of life by fashioning community members as the noble descendants of illustrious rulers from the pre-Columbian past. The documents register significant events in the histories of communities, often creating a sense of continuity between the colonial present and that of antiquity. What is more, they provide the limits of the territory within a depicted landscape using a reflexive, ambulatory model. Representations of place evoke ritual practices of walking the boundaries from the perspective of the ground, enabling readers to acquire different forms of knowledge as they move through the pages of the book and the envisioned landscape to which it points. The different communicative forms evident in the Techialoyans, including pictorial, alphabetic, oral, and performative modes contribute to understandings of indigenous literacies of the later colonial period by demonstrating the diverse resources and methods upon which indigenous leaders drew to preserve community histories and territories. </p><p> The Techialoyans present an innovative artistic and scribal tradition that drew upon pre-Columbian, early colonial, and European conventions, as well as the contemporary late-colonial pictorial climate. The artists consciously juxtaposed traditional indigenous materials and conventions with those of the contemporary colonial moment to simultaneously create a sense of both old and new. Not only did the documents recount indigenous communities&rsquo; histories and affirm their noble heritages, they also proclaimed possession of an artistic and scribal tradition that was on par with that of their revered ancestors, thereby strengthening corporate identity and demonstrating their legitimacy and autonomy within the colonial regime.</p><p>