Images of the Extraordinary: Memories of a Continent Populated by Monsters

Abstract

This work presents the results of the research Images of the Extraordinary: American Monsters of the 16th Century, artistic creation process developed by the students of the Research Seedbed in Visual Arts (SINAV, for its initials in Spanish) of the Visual Arts program of Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia (UNAD) between 2018 and 2019. With the objective of analyzing, in a critical and historical way, the construction of identities on Latin American matters, the representation of the monstrous in the stories and images constructed by the chroniclers of the Indies in the 16th century was used as a framework of analysis. These chroniclers marked processes of cultural marginalization, construction of subjectivities and power dynamics, and presented the American inhabitant as an otherness that was outside the limits of the dominant Western culture. The theoretical postulates about the monstrous are presented as a framework for historical analysis and the creation of works, with a collaborative and largely virtual working methodology. Some results of the historical research are then presented, which gives way to detailing the process of creating work that culminated in the exhibition of the audiovisual installation Images of the Extraordinary, as well as a wide range of contemporary illustrations on the monstrous and a digital product in web page format where a cartography of the monstrous in Latin America is presented and the memories of the whole project are collected.