“Claudia Calirman’s feminist perspective illuminates a wide range of recent Brazilian artists both emerging and established. Creatively conceived, clearly written, and compellingly argued.” - Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of Fray: Art and Textile Politics
“Woven across time and artistic mediums, Dissident Practices provides a complex multivocal, intergenerational, and multidisciplinary art historiography of practices of creative resistance against all forms of subordination and oppression: gendered, political, social, racial, and artistic, from the perspective of singular women artists from Brazil. This is a country that has witnessed some of the most brilliant artists in the history of modern and contemporary art, but their memory has often been erased. This book---without being survey, without unifying categorizations of gender or feminism---provides a relational, open-ended, situated perspective of the powerful contributions of Brazilian women to contemporary art, in the context of radical political and social conditions.” - Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, art historian, curator, and writer in modern and contemporary Latin American art
"Calirman’s use of the notion of resistance as the book’s central throughline effectively grounds these artists’ disparate works in a rich, nuanced, and concrete sociocultural context. We are presented, then, not with a narrow history of women’s art, but rather with a much broader history of social resistance from the point of view of women artists. . . . This book’s rich archive will plant the seeds of future research projects, and the unanswered questions that the book left me with will be soon taken up." - Megan A. Sullivan, Revista
"Calirman makes the case that the work of many Brazilian women artists in the late 20th century has been read exclusively through the lens of various feminist movements, even when these creators did not principally affiliate with them. . . . This sharp observation sets the stage for a revelatory reassessment of the legacy of women artists in Brazil during the tumultuous six-decade period from the rise of Brazil’s military dictatorship through the present." - Valentina Di Liscia, Hyperallergic
"In this concise, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched book, Calirman surveys the work of activist women artists, some trans and queer, in the context of recent Brazilian history and the increasingly global art world. . . . This is an important addition to the literature, especially to the scholarship on modern and contemporary Brazilian art available in English. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." - E. Douglas, Choice
"Calirman expertly contextualizes the work of significant Brazilian women artists within the political and social environments of their time." - Christine Rosa, ARLIS/NA Reviews
"Dissident Practices has many merits. It is an artistic, social, and historical experience throughout time and through the eyes of women artists. Calirman explores a myriad of views that ponder the multiplicity of voices as well as the historical changes and challenges faced by Brazilians throughout the last sixty years. . . . By bringing together multiple and dissident practices as a guiding force, Calirman turns the book into an almost permanent act of discovery and reflection regarding women artists and the condition of women in Brazil during the past few decades." - Ana Fauri, A Contracorriente
"Ultimately, Dissident Practices challenges scholars in the field to continue research on a subject matter that is of immense importance in the moment. Because of this, Dissident Practices serves as a critical reading for both graduate students and established scholars in the field." - Patricia J. Stout, The Latin Americanist
