Letícia Cobra Lima

Letícia Cobra Lima
She/Her/Hers
Ph.D. Candidate

Specialization

Areas of Concentration: Women and Queer Artists; Contemporary Latin American Art; Assemblage Art and the Found Object; Sculpture
Faculty Advisor: Jenni Sorkin
Committee Members: Laurie Monahan, Aleca Le Blanc (History of Art, UC Riverside), Abigail Lapin-Dardashti (Art History, UC Irvine), and Colin Gardner (Art, UCSB)
Dissertation: “Un/folding the Body: Assemblage Art in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, 1960-1996”
M.A. Thesis: "Feminist Practices as Antagonism: Anti-Hegemonic Artistic-political Incursions" (Santa Catarina State University, Florianópolis, Brazil, completed 2014)

Bio

Letícia Cobra Lima is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art & Architecture department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a doctoral emphasis in Feminist Studies (2020). Her dissertation thematizes the medium of assemblage art with found objects, particularly artworks that interact with or portray the body. The human figure has been a primary motif of modern and contemporary assemblage art at large, but specifically significant in iterations of the medium by women and queer artists in South America from the mid to late twentieth century -- a context in which political violence was often enacted through the body. Artists Farnese de Andrade (b. Brazil, 1926-1996), Feliza Bursztyn (b. Colombia, 1933-1982), and Liliana Maresca (b. Argentina, 1951-1994), explored the dissimulative potential of assemblage art to articulate new possibilities for the body, raising issues of citizenship, the status of the artwork, traditional gender roles, and the ever-present aftereffects of colonization.

Letícia was the recipient of the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2022-2023 Murray Roman Curatorial Fellowship by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A, UCSB), and served as Graduate Curator of Education in 2023-2024. In 2023, she curated Genius Loci: Domesticity and Identity in Southern California Link opens in a new window with Dr. Silvia Perea and, in 2024, A Box of One's Own: Women Beyond Borders Link opens in a new window. She has a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from Santa Catarina State University (Brazil, 2014) and Bachelor’s degrees in Graphic Design (Brazil, Federal University of Santa Catarina, 2011) and Visual Arts (Santa Catarina State University, 2015).

Publications

Leticia Cobra Lima. “Collapsing Autopia: Feliza Bursztyn’s Chatarras Link opens an external site.” react/review: a responsive journal for art & architecture 3 (May 2023), 165-171.

Leticia Cobra Lima and Jing Cao. "The Schoolhouse and the Bus." Art Practical 9.1 (2018).

Leticia Cobra Lima and Bruno Moreschi. "Press: Titles Link opens an external site."  Another 33rd São Paulo Biennial (2018).

Leticia Cobra Lima. "Arte Feminista enquanto Prática Antagonista Link opens an external site."  Revista Valise 4:8 (2014).