Alan Pelaez Lopez, Artist and Theorist

“[S]ome of us live in constant and continual rupture,” writes Jennif(f)er Tamayo in a collection that recalls their incarceration in an immigration detention center when very young. This talk traces the “constant and continual rupture” that undocumented trans* and nonbinary subjects in the United States are subjected to and the mechanisms of imagination we employ in turn to rupture the continual logic of empire, gender, and political membership. The talk asks: how does insisting on the imagination help us architect livable futures? And what blueprints have undocumented trans* activists and cultural producers already created for us to use when imagining alternative realities?

Biography: Alan Pelaez Lopez is an artist and theorist from Oaxaca, México currently based in California. Their work attends to the quotidian realities of undocumented migrants in the United States, the Black condition in Latin America, and the units of intimate kinship that trans and nonbinary people build in the face of violence. Their debut visual poetry collection, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien (The Operating System, 2020), was a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award. They are also the author of the chapbook to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020), and editor of When Language Broke Open: Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent (University of Arizona Press, forthcoming 2023).

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS); CAHSS Faculty Women’s Network; the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts; the Department of English; the Department of Visual Arts; the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication; the Latin American Studies Minor; Women Involved in Learning and Leadership Program; the Department of American Studies; the Latin American Feminisims Working Group; the LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association; and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

Photo by Jess X. Snow

Image description: An AfroIndigenous person with dreadlocks sits at a desk with a pencil. A sunbeam shines on their face.

UMBC is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for all students, staff, and visitors. If you would like to request a disability-based accommodation on site or have questions about this event or its location, please contact the Dresher Center at dreshercenter@umbc.edu.

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