I Want to Dance with You

Resistance, Community, and Solidarity in the Work of Contemporary Mexican Women Artists

Alberto McKelligan Hernández

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520422391
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

I Want to Dance with You focuses on five contemporary Mexican women artists—Gina Arizpe, Melissa García, Nuria Montiel, Brenda Anayatzin Ortiz, and Laura Valencia—analyzing their artistic projects since the early 2000s as a response to escalations in the Mexican drug war, feminicide, state-sanctioned violence, and globalization. Employing the Red de Feminismos Descoloniales's concept of descolonización to examine the delegitimization of subjective knowledges as a means to uphold colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, Alberto McKelligan Hernández analyzes the work of these artists as a form of resistance against the state's authoritarian policies. He shows how these artists confront these social and state problems through innovative art projects that foster resistance and solidarity among Mexico's diverse communities and how their works collectively reimagine a more hopeful and egalitarian future for Mexico.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. “We Are All Responsible"/ Reflecting on Mexico’s Murdered and Disappeared Bodies via Artistic Practices
• 2. “This Is Sacred, This Is Not Sacred" / Reimagining the Environment in Mexico
• 3. “We Need to Create a Space for These Other Stories" / Challenging Historical Narratives in Mexico’s Public Plazas
• 4. “They Were Able to Convert Their Time into Money, Just Like We All Do" / Exposing the Human Costs of Global Capitalism
• Epilogue
• List of Illustrations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates follow page