Aesthetics of the Dump. Contagion, Expansion and Overflow in Contemporary Latin American Cultural Practices

Abstract

This essay analyses the modes for producing waste spaces in pieces of art conceived in the nineties and thereon. For this purpose, I propose an analysis from three different perspectives: the ways in which  garbage dumps are represented; the tension relating to their materiality, their consumption and their spatiality; and the relation between aesthetization of garbage and “garbaging” of art. Entering into dialogue with some of the theoretical approaches on garbage, this essay points out a transition from an aesthetics of separation to one of contamination, in which a dislocation and an incontinence occur. Waste dumps have ceased to be those spaces in which garbage is put away from social and aesthetic life; they have become contagious and expansive territories.