Temple University

Li Machado is a PhD candidate specializing in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art, and a Curatorial Assistant at Pomona College's Benton Museum of Art. With a research emphasis on memory and memorials, presence, and absence, Li's work builds on recent histories of queer art, queer worldmaking and youth culture, and transnational identity formation in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, particularly Los Angeles. Their dissertation, “Intricately Woven: Networks of Desire in Queer Chicanx L.A., 1985-2020” focuses on depictions of queer sociability and desire in portraiture, drawing, and archival work between the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Li is a current Temple University Future Faculty Fellow, a recipient of the inaugural Marcia Hall Research Award, and a former Getty Marrow Undergraduate Intern. Between 2020 and 2021, they were president of the Art History Graduate Organization (AHGO) at Temple, leading the graduate student cohort’s push for an overhauled undergraduate curriculum, anti-racist teaching, and improved teaching assistant training in the wake of the summer 2020 Black Lives Matters protests. They have also advocated for improved remote learning assessments and the use of open educational resources in the wake of the pandemic.

Li previously earned a BA in Art History from University of La Verne (2016), studying Brazilian modernist painting and the Antropofagia movement in 1920s São Paulo. They subsequently earned an MA in the same field from University of Oregon (2019), where their thesis examined the visual culture, propaganda, and boycott of the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina.

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Li Machado (él/elle) es un estudiante doctoral del arte moderno y contemporáneo de latinoamérica y de comunidades latinx en los Estados Unidos. Actualmente Li estudia el arte político y la formación de identidades transnacionales y LGBTQ+ en México, E.E.U.U., y el arte chicanx. Su tesis doctoral se enfoca en la representación de relaciones cuir en retratos fotográficos y dibujados entre 1985 y 2020, durante las eras de la crisis de SIDA y la pandemia de COVID-19. Desde 2023, también trabaja como un asistente curatorial para el Benton Museum of Art, vinculado a Pomona College.

Entre 2020 y 2021, Li era presidentx de la Organización de Estudiantes Graduados de la Historia del Arte (AHGO) de Temple University. Ahí lideró discusiones para instituir normas de antirracismo y reformar el currículum del departamento de la historia del arte. También propuso la adopción de recursos educativos abiertos durante la transición al aprendizaje remoto en 2020.

Li llegó a Temple University proveniente de University of Oregon en 2019, donde recibió un MA en la historia del arte por su tesis sobre la propaganda y la cultura visual de la Copa Mundial de la FIFA 1978 en Argentina. Anteriormente recibió un BA en la historia del arte de University

of La Verne estudiando la poesía y pintura de la vanguardia paulista en Brasil. Li es hijx de inmigrantes argentinos y trinitenses, y es hincha del club de fútbol Boca Juniors.