# Invocations of the Diaspora: A Conversation on the Art of Belonging ![Blurred woman walking past a painting.](/sites/g/files/omnuum756/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2025-09/12O2A4117.jpg?itok=SjZwDylX) #### calendar\_today Date and Time **September 25, 2025** 05:00PM - 07:15PM EDT #### pin\_drop Location **HAA Room 422** [485 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02138 United States ]() Organized by Harvard David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard History of Art and Architecture Department. Two decades ago, migration and diaspora were central topics in critical discourse. Today, a new urgency is felt to revisit and reinvigorate the diaspora as a definitory experience of our times. Invocations of the Diaspora: a conversation on the art of belonging returns to the diaspora not simply as a condition of exile or distance, but as a generative position from which to rethink identity, memory, aesthetics, space, and belonging. This program is developed in conjunction with [*Three Variations of a Diasporic Landscape*](https://www.drclas.harvard.edu/three-variations-diasporic-landscape), on view at DRCLAS until March 2026. This exhibition maps longing and belonging across personal and historical terrains, exploring the cultural and political significance of the Latin American diaspora. Featuring artists Sandra Gamarra, Naomi Gamarra, and Sarah Zapata, their work construct across the walls of the Center an intimate geography of displacement—where nostalgia becomes a form of creative reconstruction, and the absence of homeland gives rise to new visual and emotional landscapes. Exhibition artist **Sandra Gamarra**, visual artists **Tania Bruguera** and **Rubén Ortiz-Torres**, curator **Evan Garza**, scholar **Nelson Maldonado Torres**, and Harvard professor **Doris Sommer** will extend and deepen the exhibition’s themes of liminality and in-betweenness. Together, *Invocations of the Diaspora: a conversation on the art of belonging* asks why Latin America continues to exclude its diaspora from regional imaginaries, even as diasporic communities reshape its image abroad. At a time when nationalism threatens pluralism across the hemisphere, the experiences of the diaspora—its aesthetic strategies, political insights, and emotional architectures—offer a necessary framework for rethinking Latin America not as a fixed place, but as a network of contested and evolving affiliations. **Artists and Speakers:** - **Sandra Gamarra,** Visual Artist. Known for Pinacoteca Migrante, representing Spain in the 60th Venice Biennale, with works in MoMA and Tate Museum. - **Tania Bruguera,** Visual Artist and Senior Lecturer, Harvard University. Founder of Latin America’s first performance studies program, exploring art and political life. - **Rubén Ortiz-Torres,** Visual Artist and Professor, UC San Diego. Works across photography, video, painting, and installations; leading figure in Mexican postmodernism. - **Evan Garza,** Curator, MASS MoCA. Contemporary art scholar and curator, former Artistic Director of the 2021 Texas Biennial. - **Nelson Maldonado Torres,** Professor of Philosophy, UConn. Expert on modernity/coloniality, decoloniality, and liberation ethics. - **Doris Sommer,** Professor of Romance Languages, Harvard University. Founder of Cultural Agents, promoting civic engagement through the arts. **Moderators:** - **Patricio del Real,** Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University - **Thomas Cummins,** Director of Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University - **Jose Falconi**, Assistant Professor of Art and Human Rights, University of Connecticut --- Attachments- [ picture\_as\_pdf Invocations of the Diaspora.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum756/files/2025-09/Invocations%20of%20the%20Diaspora.pdf) --- See also:- [ History of Art and Architecture ](/event-categories/history-art-and-architecture) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://artsandhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/node/1445591/event-feed.ics) Copy link link