Dr Helena Vilalta Conesa

Biography

I am an art historian with specialisms in contemporary art, feminism and exhibition studies.

My current book project examines how Lee Lozano, Adrian Piper and Howardena Pindell, three artists living in New York in the 1970s, retooled conceptual materials and procedures – such as instruction-based scores, diagrammatic drawing, and bureaucratic tasks – to address the imbrication of concrete bodies and abstract structures. In dialogue with feminist art history, as well as recent Black feminist discourse, the book draws attention to practices of resistance that lay bare the granular, intimate effects of sexual and racial systems of domination.

I hold a PhD in the History of Art from University College London and an MA (with distinction) in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art. I have been awarded a Terra Predoctoral Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and a Terra Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at The Courtauld Centre for the Arts of the Americas in London, as well as a British Council Fellowship for Postgraduate Studies.

My research has been published in journals such as Afterall, Oxford Art Journal, Texte zur Kunst, Cahiers du Cinéma and Moving Image Review & Art Journal, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues.

From 2011 to 2016 I was an editor of Afterall journal and I have also held curatorial positions at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School in New York and the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona.