Education and Training
BA, Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven
PhD, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
Research Interests
Jennifer Gonzalez writes about contemporary art with an emphasis on installation art, digital art and activist art. She is interested in understanding the strategic use of space (exhibition space, public space, virtual space) by contemporary artists and by cultural institutions such as museums. More specifically, she has focused on the representation of the human body and its relation to discourses of race and gender.
Artists over the past two decades have used installation art to represent their concerns about history, identity and memory. Installation art and museum display practices have become mutually influential; many artists have been invited to produce original art projects inside museums or using museum exhibition techniques. Gonzalez’s research has lead to a forthcoming book project on the work of contemporary artists who use installation art as a way to stage a critical assessment of race politics in the United States.
In addition to installation art, Jennifer Gonzalez has written on contemporary digital art and specifically on the visual representation of the body. Several of her articles and book chapters focus on the cyborg body or the hybrid body as both symptoms of and metaphors for cultural transformation. The visual representation of new forms of corporeality often signal a utopian hope or distopic unease with new technologies and imaginary futures.
Selected Publications Co-authored volumes
2005
Christian Marclay (London: Phaidon Press)
Co-edited volumes
2004
Shock and Awe: War on Words (Santa Cruz: The New Pacific Press)
Book Chapters
2005
“Christian Marclay: Overtures,” in Christian Marclay (London: Phaidon Press)
2003
“Invention as Critique: Neologisms in Chicana Art Theory,” chapter response in Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader, Arredondo, Hurtado, Klahn, Nájera-Ramirez and Zavella, eds., (Durham: Duke University Press), 316-323
2002
“Landing in California” in Art/Women/California 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections, (Berkeley: University of California Press), 219-240
2000
"The Appended Subject: Race and Identity as Digital Assemblage,” in Race in Cyberspace, Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, Gil Rodman, eds., (New York: Routledge), 27-50
Reprinted by invitation in Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, eds., (New Bruswick: Rutgers University Press), 2003, 299-318
Reprinted by invitation in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, Amelia Jones, ed., (London: Routledge), 2003, 534-545
1999
“Archeological Devotion” in With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture, Lisa Bloom, ed., (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 184-212
1995
“Envisioning Cyborg Bodies:Notes from current research,” in The Cyborg Handbook, C. H. Gray, ed., (New York:Routledge), 267-279
Reprinted by invitation in the Cybercultures Reader, David Bell and Barbara Kennedy, eds., (London: Routledge), 2000, 540-551
Reprinted by invitation in The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader, Kirkup, Janes and Woodward, eds., (London: The Open University and Routledge), 1999, 58-73
“Autotopographies,” in Prosthetic Territories: Politics and Hypertechnologies, Gabe Brahm and Mark Driscoll, eds., (Boulder: Westview Press), 133-150
Articles and Reviews in Art Magazines and Professional Journals
2003
“Paul Pfeiffer” in Bomb, Spring, Issue 83: 22-29
2002
“Pepón Osorio” in Bomb, Winter, Issue 82: 8-9
1999
“Urban Exile: The Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr.” in Art Journal, Winter, vol. 24, no. 1: 104-105
“Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol” in Aztlan, Spring, vol. 24, no. 1: 211-215
1996
“Collectibles: Fred Wilson,” Frieze, May, Issue 28: 62-63
“Monkey Puzzle,” interview with Donna Haraway, World Art, Vol. 1: 40-43
1994
“Heterotopias and Shared Methods of Resistance: Navigating Social Spaces and Spaces of Identity,” with Michelle Habell-Pallan, in Inscriptions, Special Issue: Enunciating Our Terms: Women of Color in Collaboration and Conflict, vol. 7: 80-104
1993
“Rhetoric of the Object: Material memory and the artwork of Amalia Mesa-Bains,” in Visual Anthropology Review, Special Issue: Feminist Approaches to the Visualization of Culture, vol. 9, no. 1: 82-91
Selected Catalog Essays
2003
“Morphologies: Race as Visual Technology” in Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, New York: International Center of Photography
2001
“Against the Grain: The Artist as Conceptual Materialist” in Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979-2000, Center for Art and Visual Culture, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 22-32
2000
“Las Twines,” in Pepon Osorio: Door to Door, EAP Press, 84-90
“Windows and Mirrors: Chicano Art Collectors at Home” in East of the River: Chicano Art Collectors Anonymous, Santa Monica Museum of Art, 38-41
1995
“Negotiated Frontiers: Contemporary Chicano Photography,” in From the West: Chicano Narrative Photography, The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, 17-22
Encyclopedia Entries
2002
“Pepón Osorio” in the St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists, St. James Press, 435-438
1998
“Installation Art,” in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 503-508
Teaching Interests
Contemporary Art in the U.S. and Europe, History of the Museum, Activist Art Since 1960, History of Photography, Semiotics, Feminist Theory
Please join HAVC Professor Jennifer González for her book signing and presentation at the UCSC BayTree Bookstore on Tuesday, 27 May, 2008 at 12:00pm, as we celebrate her new book "Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art".
Jennifer A. González