Dissertation Title: Tectonics of Development: Mineral Extraction and the Architecture of the University-City in South America, 1945–1975
Advisor: Fabiola Lopez-Duran
Giovanna Bassi Cendra is a PhD Candidate specializing in the history of modern Latin American art and architecture, and has been a member of the Racial Geography Project since 2020. Her research focus is the entanglement of architecture with the ideology of “development” and extractive capitalism in South America during the postwar period. Her ongoing dissertation project, which interrogates the planning, design, and construction of university campuses vis-à-vis the intensification of mining and oil extraction in the region, received the Carter Manny Research Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in 2020. Her project is also supported by the Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship and the Rockefeller Foundation. Giovanna has collaborated with the Documents Project of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and has written and published an award-winning essay on the work of Argentinean artist Gyula Kosice.
Publications
“La Ciudad Hidroespacial: Challenging the Functional City.” ICAA Documents Project Working Papers: The Publication Series for Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art 6 (December 2018): 4-15.
Co-author with Fabiola López-Durán. “Breather: John Sparagana’s Third Condition.” Introductory essay for John Sparagana: Breather exhibition brochure, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, September 14–October 19, 2017. Available here.