Research Interests
- Contemporary Cuban Art
- Art criticism
- Exhibition histories
- Artist networks
- Diaspora and memory
Education
B.A., English Literature and Art History, Southern Methodist University
M.A., Art History, Tulane University
Bio
Chasitie Brown is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Art History and the Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS) at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in contemporary art from Latin America and the Caribbean with a focus on Cuban art and art criticism. Her research interests include representations of race, gender, and history in contemporary Cuban art of the island and its global diaspora in Spain, with a particular focus on the Canary Islands.
Chasitie is currently writing her dissertation titled “The Dormant Scar: Art and Race in Cuba in The Queloides Exhibition Series (1997–2012).” The project will provide the first monographic study of a group of exhibitions, known as Queloides, that took up one of the most silenced issues in contemporary Cuban society: anti-Black racism. Looking at a spectrum of media, from photography to paintings, she argues that the artists participating in Queloides challenged traditional representations of Blackness rooted in Afro-derived religion and folklore. Instead, they approached race from historical and social perspectives, using humor and, especially, irony to challenge racial stereotypes and dominant notions of history that excluded the Black presence.
Her second project, "Transatlantic Crossings: Cuban Art and Artist Networks in Spain," examines how Cuban artists working during the late 1990s and early 2000s reimagine and engage with the history of Spain through the perspective of Cuba. It pays particular attention to the exchanges and networks among artists, art critics, and curators from Cuba and the Canary Islands, who forged a unique affective relationship built on a shared archipelagic kinship.
Chasitie’s research has received generous support from the Donald D. Harrington Foundation at the University of Texas at Austin, the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, the Goizueta Foundation at the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, and the Tinker Foundation among others.