Paola Cortes-Rocca

Paola Cortes-Rocca is a cultural critic specializing in the intersections of writing and visuality in Latin America. She is Professor at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and a Researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). Her book La letra en el ojo: Un ensayo entre imágenes y escrituras (Artexarte, 2024) explores questions of archive, materiality, and performance in the expanded field of contemporary Argentine aesthetics.

At DRCLAS, she will develop a project examining avant-garde practices in 1960s and 1970s Argentina through the figure of Oscar Masotta. Titled Radical Imagination, the project argues that his trajectory bridges disciplines, practices, and geographies, fostering transnational exchanges between Latin America and Europe. It takes Masotta as a key figure through which to revisit the intersections of aesthetics and politics, theory and practice, and art and life.

Cortes-Rocca received her PhD from Princeton University and taught at San Francisco State University, where she chaired the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. She has held fellowships at Princeton and the University of Southern California (USC). She authored El tiempo de la máquina (Colihue, 2011) and essays on photography and literature. She is a translator of Boris Groys, Jill Casid, Jonathan Crary, and Timothy Morton, among others, and a curator of Osvaldo Lamborghini’s visual work. She is part of the feminist collective Ni Una Menos. Cortes-Rocca will serve as Vice President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) beginning in June 2026 and as President the following year.