A major retrospective of Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld's work is on view at Columbia University's Wallach Art Gallery through March 15. The exhibition, curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson and Natalia Brizuela, focuses on Rosenfeld's clandestine, antifascist art created during the Pinochet dictatorship, highlighting her use of coded public gestures—like altering street lane dividers into crosses and Xes—to build solidarity and protest political and economic oppression.
The show matters because it recovers and contextualizes a pivotal figure in Latin American conceptual and political art, emphasizing the role of female friendship and artistic community under authoritarian rule. Rosenfeld's work, which cleverly navigated censorship by appearing as ambiguous art rather than direct activism, protested both the Pinochet regime and U.S. intervention in Chile, advocating for an art that permeates public life and champions social justice.