Building an Autotheory on the Necessity of Art
A few references that continue to compose my practice
The movement toward meeting our necessities is a cyclical work of recognition, a recurrent effort to identify what truly matters at the present time to build a better future. History provides us with many insights into where to look for what will recur in the spiral of time. For the artist, the history of other artists is fundamental to situating our work beyond our individual paradigms. On the ground of the specific path where we must take our steps, we find the beaten soil of those who came before us.
This proposal for creative practice is a return to re-establishing an autotheory, considering that the “theory” in autotheory derives from researching and developing connections with the work of other thinkers and artists that precede and walk alongside our art practices. An autotheory is a crossroad, the improbable but inevitable meeting point where an artist encounters the experiences and concepts that compose their practice and existence. An autotheory implicates the personal in the historical, shifting on the one hand the anonymity created by History that identifies the larger systems of power governing society, and on the other the singularity established by history that invents geniuses and celebrities. With an autotheory, we rethink the basis of Knowledge, starting from how our perceptions and experiences connect us with the theories that already exist in the world.
The academic development of autotheory is recognized in literary studies, given the proximity of writing and theory-making. In the book Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism, Lauren Fournier connects the development of autotheory with the strengthening of decolonial and feminist debates in academic literary studies since the 1970s. She writes: “Autotheory is the integration of the auto or ‘self’ with philosophy or theory, often in ways that are direct, performative, and self-aware – especially so in those practices that emerge with postmodernism. This leads to the complicated questions of what constitutes philosophy and theory – the stakes of the term “autotheory” and its histories appear in the politics of who has access to writing in ways considered theoretical and critical – and of what kinds of knowledge are understood as legitimately critical or rigorous and by whom. (…) The very integration of auto or autos, the self, with theory into a single term is contentious, especially in light of the historical disparagement of self-reflective work as a supposedly narcissistic and therefore nonintellectual or fundamentally uncritical mode – and especially when the work is made by women and people of color. (…) Autotheory is tied to a politics of radical self-reflection, embodied knowledge, and sustained, literary nonfictional writing through the self that has been, and continues to be, suppressed and repressed by certain patriarchal and colonial contexts.” (Lauren Fournier, Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021), p. 38.)
Fournier’s definition of autotheory contextualizes it in the present moment, pointing to its cultural and political challenges. Moreover, her analysis demonstrates the reliance of theory on writing. In my practice, I’ve developed a first instance of autotheory while writing my PhD dissertation. In it, I sought to establish first the autotheory that the Brazilian artist Antonio Dias might have relied on to develop his work in the 1970s. Even though Dias didn’t write academically to theorize, I identified in the text that he wrote on paintings and the arch and repetitive series of his work a framework of thought that I called an autotheory. By the end of writing the dissertation, I found it inevitable to recognize the projection of my own practice as an artist on my research as an art historian, pointing towards an autotheory of my own that, similar to Dias, also relied on painting.
Over the last two years, since finishing my PhD, I’ve continued to gather references and find ways to bring my work into the world. As Grada Killomba recently said in an interview, “I focus above all on telling my story, on doing the work I want to do. So this constant alienation of only existing through the other, and only allowing my existence through the dominant other, is not important to me. What truly matters is to know what my questions are. Now, I’ll experiment with how I can answer these questions. I try to build a vocabulary to answer my questions. We are at this moment as a generation to build something that doesn’t exist, instead of trying to answer questions of others. We must raise our own questions and work around them.” (Tais Araujo interviews Grada Kilomba for Inhotim, published February 7, 2025. <https://www.youtube.com/@inhotim>)
Some of the questions I desire to answer through my work are: How does the necessity of making art support the construction of theory? And by contrast, how can the clarity brought by theory perpetuate the necessity of art? In other words, why is making art necessary for building better theories? And what theories expand the possibilities and capacities of art? Within those theories, which ones are specific to me and my practice? Which ones are general or particular to my students?
At the core of these questions is the dialectic between necessity and freedom, as postulated by Karl Marx. While we have historically associated art and art-making with freedom, particularly the freedom of action reserved for artists (or, in Marxist terms, the freedom in leisure), my questions shift the notion of freedom towards the theoretical after recognizing that making art is more than a human capacity; it is a social necessity. By establishing art-making as a necessity, we determine an axis of choice and recognize the actual material possibilities of the present moment.
Through this research/creative practice agenda, I compose works that enable other artists to build their autotheories. The following annotated bibliography (organized in no particular order) indicates some of the texts that initiate my Research/Creative Practice Agenda.
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. (Penguin Classics, 2020).
A collection of texts on prose by Lorde. In many of them, she deals with the questions of why to write, how to write, and how to be a public person. In different instances, she articulates something that I find incredibly liberating when making art, and she says: “There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.”
Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).
Levy’s writing style is noteworthy because it seamlessly integrates the present moment with memories and deep analysis, creating a stream of thought. The book’s subject matter is also interesting because it explores the evolution of an artist/writer's work over time, its integration into her daily life, and the impact of this process.
Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. (Bloomsbury Revelations, 2016).
This book reminds me that there is much more to study and open myself to. Serres writes in a way that gives space for what feels like a topographical reading: you go to places, go up high in your thoughts, and then down low in your concentration while reading his ideas.
Clarice Lispector, Água Viva. (New Directions, 2012).
One of my favorite texts reminds me that in art, everything is possible! Lispector writes a book about being a painter who decides to write about painting. The book is poetic and intimate, yet fictional. Like the title, it is fluid like water and super alive.
Malidoma Patrice Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa. (Penguin Putnam Inc., 1999).
All books by Malidoma Somé and Sobonfu Somé are great introductions to other cosmologies and ways of knowing. Their texts shift the structures of Western knowledge by reintroducing the value of tribal social relations and spirit-nature traditions that include humans.
Anne Truitt, Daybook, Turn, Prospect: The Journey of an Artist. (Scribner, 2013).
These books by Truitt remind me that being an artist and defining ourselves as such is a lifelong line of thinking. Truitt started writing to answer the question of what an artist is, and I love one of the answers that she writes: “We are artists because we are ourselves.”
bell hooks, Teaching To Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. (Routledge, 2014).
I wanted to include a book about learning. I chose bell hooks because she writes in the lineage of Paulo Freire and because she shows how teachers think (or should think) so students can learn. I believe every student should also think like a teacher, so we can finally break free from any power relation that might arise between these invented roles (the “student” and the “teacher”). An artist always sees the person beyond their social roles and understands that these roles are human creations. Whenever we are studying anything, I find it essential to see learning as a “practice of freedom.”
Gloria E. Anzaldua, Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. (Duke University Press, 2015).
Anzaldua’s text is one of the most liberating books for witnessing someone working with and discovering their theoretical paradigms. The book is inconclusive, yet it brings up many cultural perspectives necessary to unpack any theory.
Roland Barthes, Mythologies. (Hill and Wang, 2013 ed).
Barthes is my go-to author for linking semiotics with theory because he wrote many texts for the general public, making them engaging and full of good examples. Mythologies has a chapter in which he unpacks the construction of myths in society from the language/semiotic perspective. It is, in itself, an excellent theoretical paradigm for organizing one’s thinking.