The invisibilization of political violence, its material traces and spatial manifestations, characterize (post)conflict situations. Yet counter-semantics and dissonant narratives that challenge this invisibility have been articulated by artists, writers, and human rights activists that increasingly seek to contest the related historical amnesia. Adopting performance as a concept that is defined by repetitive, aesthetic practicessuch as speech and bodily habits through which both individual and collective identities are constructed and perceived (Susan Slyomovics)this collection addresses various forms of performing human rights in transitional situations in Spain, Latin America, and the Middle East. Bringing scholars together with artists, writers, and curators, and working across a range of disciplines, Performing Human Rights addresses these instances of omission and neglect, revealing how alternate institutional spaces and strategies of cultural production have intervened in the processes of historical justice and collective memory. With contributions by Zahira Aragüete-Toribio, Pauline Bachmann, Vikki Bell, Liliana Gómez, Joscelyn Jurich, Uriel Orlow, Friederike Pannewick, Elena Rosauro, Dorota Sajewska, Stephenie Young.

Liliana Gómez is professor of art and society at the University of Kassel/Kunsthochschule Kassel and the documenta Institut. She directs the research project Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South. Post-Conflict in Literature, Art, and Emergent Archives. Recently she edited Performing Human Rights. Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practices in the Global South (Diaphanes/Think Art, Zurich, 2021) and co-edited with Lisa Blackmore Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art (Routledge, New York, 2020). She is the author of Lo urbano. Teorías culturales y políticas de la ciudad en América Latina (IILI, Pittsburgh, 2014).