PhD in Art History
María de Lourdes Mariño
María de Lourdes Mariño is an independent researcher and curator currently a Ph.D. candidate at Temple University, where she specializes in Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America and the Caribbean, including its diaspora. Her scholarship relies on theories of postcoloniality and decoloniality as conceptual frameworks to unravel the region's race, class, gender, political, and economic power relationships as presented through the history of art.
Mariño's research interest centers on the history of Cuban art from 1980 to the present, focusing on the history of performance and video art. She interrogates the role of politics in the production and promotion of Cuban art and its development into diverse diasporic communities. Additionally, Mariño reflects on the memory-building processes happening through the arts in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and its diaspora. Her essay, "Decolonizing La Revolución: Cuban Artistic Practices of the Liminal Space," was published in The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History (November, 2023).
Mariño was awarded the Inaugural Audrey Flack Short-Term Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in 2024. Also, she has been awarded the Goizueta Fellowship at the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami in 2024 and the Marcia Hall Research Award at Temple University in 2023.
Mariño's teaching experience includes topics like Arts of World in the Art History Department at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University (2021-2023), and Art and Activism at Washington College (2024). She has been an Adjunct Faculty in the Associates in Arts Program (AAP) at the University of Delaware (Fall 2022-present) teaching a survey in Caribbean Art. Previously, Mariño taught for the Department of Art Theoretical Studies in the School of Visual Arts and the Department of Cuban Studies at the University of the Arts (ISA), La Habana, Cuba, 2007-2015.
As an Independent Curator, she has recently worked on "Sacred Roots, Earthly Memories: Lydia Cabrera's Legacy, Diaspora, and Community," co-curated with Alberto Sosa and Michel Mendoza. Rutgers University, November 10th, 2023. Her curatorial work also includes "The Little Grey Wolf Will Come," Dashiel Hernandez's exhibition, based on the Cuban-Soviet period's childhood memories and material culture at Taylor Hall, University of Delaware, USA. 2018, and "Barking all night" at Experiments in Cinema, Video Exhibition of Cuban filmmakers, University of New Mexico, USA. 2017.
Dissertation Title: Performing disidentifications in transnational Cuba: Carlos Martiel, Susana Delahante, Yali Romagoza and Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara (2009-2021).
MPA, Nonprofit Management (Arts and Culture), University of Delaware, 2018
BA, Art History, University of Havana, Cuba, 2007
Advisor: Mariola Alvarez, PhD