Ariel Florencia Richards

She holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. She was a fellow of the National Research and Development Agency (ANID). Her dissertation was titled “HOLES: Performative Tactics to Dismantle the Mandate of Masculinity.”

She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aesthetics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from New York University. She is the author of the novel *Inacabada* (Penguin Random House, 2024) and numerous critical texts on visual arts. She was a research fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal and a doctoral fellow of the National Research and Development Agency (ANID).

Her doctoral research focused on the act of breaking, and to this end, she critically analyzed experimental works created almost 50 years ago in Chile. The intention was to displace them from their primary category and provide them with a new interpretation. These works are Peligro (1969) by Félix Maruenda; Hombre (1971) by Carlos Peters; Obrabierta (1978-1985) by Hernán Parada; and Diré tu nombre (1989) by Gonzalo Díaz. The aim was to understand—through the records of these ephemeral actions—why these artists, during a historical period marked by violence, explored new artistic practices that tended to create material openings by making holes, perforations, and ruptures. This was done to question the continued relevance of the act of breaking things to subvert oppressive contexts.