
Dr Ver贸nica Tello
Tello holds a BA (Honours), Art History, and a PhD, Art History, from the University of Melbourne.
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Senior Lecturer, Contemporary Art History
Chief Investigator, Australian Research Council,听Parallel Structures听(2021-2025)
School of Art & Design, University of New South Wales
Paddington Campus
Office F216H
Email: v.tello [at] unsw.edu.au
PhD, Art History, University of Melbourne, 2014
Research
Ver贸nica Tello鈥檚 research encompasses Latin American and global art historiography, with a particular focus on queer methodologies and the art and archives of the diaspora. She is the author of (Radical Aesthetics Radical Art series, Bloomsbury Philosophy, 2016) and the editor of (2023, Discipline and Third Text Publications), featuring contributions from Srdjan Jovanic Weiss,听Dylan AT Miner, Walter D Mignolo, Zoe Butt, Carla Macchiavello, and many others. Currently, she is developing a monograph titled A History of Contemporary Art and Neoliberalism After 1973,听which focuses on the global circulation of Chilean conceptual art during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) and its experimental modelling of neoliberalism. Through seven years of archival research, the book traces the circulation of these art commodity objects produced within Pinochet鈥檚 crucible across the last fifty years - across biennials and, more recently, museum and private collections. By doing so, an art history of the relations between neoliberalism and post-1970s art emerges. Tello's writing has appeared in scholarly journals such as Third Text, Memory Studies, Contemporaneity, and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, for which she serves as editor-in-chief. In 2024, she edited the special issue "Liquid Time; Liquify Art History" for Index Journal,听focusing on approaches to re-staging archives and histories of art and exhibitions across Brazil, Chile, Venice, Australia, Malaysia, and Fiji.
Tello鈥檚 writing as an art critic has been featured in magazines such as Artforum, Frieze, Afterall Online, and , for which she is a contributing editor. As an extension of her art historical work, since 2021, she has led the curatorial research project 听to critically engage with discourses about diversity and inclusion in Anglo-Australian art museums. The project tests the method of para-institutionality, or curating alongside the museum, to advance structural change in collaboration with听the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA)听and diasporic and Indigenous researchers and curators.
Tello's research has been supported by various residencies, fellowships and grants from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Rhodes University, Social Practice CUNY (City University New York), the Frankfurter Kunstvereiin, the Banff Curatorial Institute, the Australian Research Council, Creative Australia, Create NSW, the Bundanon Trust and 国民彩票.听She has been invited to deliver talks at Skulptur听Projekte M眉nster, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Power Institute at the University of Sydney, the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Afterall's Exhibition Histories Masters, Central Saint Martins College in London, the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, and
Teaching
Tello has taught courses in modern and contemporary art history, including 鈥淎vant-Garde and Postmodern Art鈥 and 鈥淎rt and Revolution鈥 at the University of Melbourne. In recent years at 国民彩票, she has developed art history courses such as "Australian Art (1804-present)" and 鈥淕lobal Contemporary Art.鈥 Additionally, she leads the Honours-level 鈥淩esearch Methods鈥 course for students working on a thesis. She regularly supervises and chairs panels for graduate students in the School of Art & Design, focusing on a range of topics, including diasporic, decolonial, trans, and queer curatorial and artistic methodologies in Australian, Asian, and Latin American contexts. See below for details on graduate supervision.
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Select Publications:
2024, Tello, ed, Special Issue, "Editor's Introduction: Liquid Time."听,听Index Journal
2024, Tello, catalog essay, 鈥淭he Destructive Character Sees Nothing Permanent. But For This Reason, She Sees Ways Everywhere,鈥 , UTS Gallery, Sydney.
2023, Tello, editor, with contributions from Walter Mignolo, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Dylan AT Miner, et al. (Third Text and Discipline: London and Melbourne, 2023),听http://www.thirdtext.org/future-souths
2023, Tello, essay, ""听Memo Magazine, 1 (Summer): 66-69
2022, Tello, essay, ","听Memory Studies, Issue 2, April pp. 390 - 401 12,听 Anthologised in:听Counter-Monuments, Memory Practices in Public Spaces,听eds., Maria Engelskirchen, Ursula Frohne, Corinna K眉hn, and Marianne Wagner, in press, 2025, transcript Verlag,听https://cup.columbia.edu/book/counter-monuments/9783837670844
2022, Tello and听 Sebasti谩n Valenzuela-Valdivia,听essay and听atlas, "Southern Atlas: Art Criticism in/out of Chile and Australia during the Pinochet Regime,"听Third Text Online.
2021, Tello, catalog essay, "Juan D谩vila, Self-Portrait as Ingre's Violin (1984)," Queer Readings of the Monash University Collection,听Ratliff M; Parker FE,听(ed.),听Monash University Museum of Art.
2020, Tello, essay, (2012-)"听Third Text,听34,听pp. 635 - 649
2018, Tello, chapter, 'Aesthetic Autonomy at the Border: Notes on Necro-Art', in听Lushetich N听(ed.),听The Aesthetics of Necropolitics,听Rowman and Littlefield,听London and New York
2016, Tello, book,听Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art,听Bloomsbury,听London and New York: Focus on , Hito Steyerl, Dinh Q L茅, Isaac Julien, and Rosemary Laing.听
2014,听Tello, Third Text,听28(6), 555鈥562.听
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
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Selected Grants
2021-2025 Australian Research Council: Lead Researcher Parallel Structures: Experiments with Diversity and Curating Beside the Museum. In partnership with the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), Distinguished Professor Ien Ang (Western Sydney University) and artist Salote Tawale (University of Sydney). Project website: . This project analyses diversification strategies within the context of Anglo-Australian art museums in collaboration with emerging and independent curators of colour.听
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2023 Parallel Structures, 国民彩票 Art & Design, for exhibition see
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2023 An Archive of Neoliberalism; A History of Contemporary Art (1973-)听国民彩票, Sabbatical Research Grant.
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2022-2021 An Archive of Neoliberalism; A History of Contemporary Art (1973-)听国民彩票 Art & Design, faculty research development grant.
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2019 Creative Australia, Individual Project Grant for initial archival history on the book An Archive of Neoliberalism: A History of Contemporary Art (1973-)听
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2019 PLuS Alliance Research Fellowship (alliance between 国民彩票, Kings College and Arizona State University), for travel and development of research on diasporic art historiography.
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2015-2018 Vice-Chancellor鈥檚 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of New South Wales
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Current projects include:听
A History of Contemporary Art and Neoliberalism After 1973:听Through seven years of archival research, the book analyzes the global circulation of Chilean art and curating developed within the crucible of Pinochet's Chile (1973-90),听often described as the "petri dish" of neoliberalism. As the world became integrated and networked through neoliberalism's economic system and philosophy, Chilean artists and curators--including those exiled during the Pinochet dictatorship--responded by forging a discrete exhibition circuit. They were tracking how art was becoming global, and used technologies of reproduction, spanning video, photography, slides, and the body, to record its unfolding. The book analyses post-1973 practices to narrate a novel history of global art and neoliberalism.
Parallel Structures:听With Salote Tawale and Ien Ang, Tello leads the Australian Research Council Linkage听project on how collections and archives can catalyze听epistemological experiments and听equity (or structural change)听within Australian regional art museums. The project, entitled听is developed in partnership with Murray Albury Museum of Art (MAMA) and听embraces the potential of the 鈥榩arallel鈥 or the 鈥榩ara鈥 as a way of being adjacent to, beyond, or distinct from the structural formations that are typically the case in Australian art institutions. Project collaborators are Evgenia Anagnostopoulou, Kelly Dezart-Smith, Sebastian Henry-Jones, Ruha Fifita, Lana Nguyen, and Tian Zhang.
Tello is the Editor in Chief of the听published by Taylor & Francis and the Sydney editor of听.
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My Research Supervision
PhD
June Miskell (art history/theory) - Archipealogic thinking and Filipinx contemporary art (with Mina Roces and Astrid Lorange)
Angela Goddard听(curatorial, practice-led research) - World Making Strategies and Curatorial Support Structures in Australia (with Felicity Fenner and Lizzie Muller)
Jade Muratore (practice-led research) - Queer histories and para-fiction (with Diana Baker Smith, Rochelle Haley and Grant Stevens)
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Completed
Teresa Hunter-Hicks (art theory/history)听鈥撎齃abour,听Collaboration and Collectivity in听Australian and North American Poster Collectives (1968-1991) (with Diana Baker Smith)
Anabelle Lacroix (curatorial, practice-led research) - Insomniac aesthetics, desynchrony and the museum (with Caleb Kelly)听
Aneshka Mora (art theory/history)听鈥撎鼶ecolonialisation and Institutional Critique in Contemporary Australian Art (with Bianca Hester)
James Nguyen (practice-led research)听鈥撎齅aking听Ch贸 b貌*: Troubling Vi峄噒speak:听Collaborating, translating, and archiving with family in听Australian contemporary art听(with Jennifer Biddle), 2021.
Meredith Birrell (art theory/history)听鈥揟he Fugitive Self: Posthuman subjectivity in the Essay-Films of The Otolith Group, Hito Steyerl and Ursula Biemann, 2020.
MFA
Lisa Myeonjoo, Kinship and Diasporic Art听 (with Diana Baker Smith)听
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Completed
Evgenia (Jenny) Anagnostopoulou, Untitled (topic: curatorial experiments and the global souths) (with Diana Baker Smith)
Lu Forsberg, Counter-Surveillance, Extractivism and Eco-Aesthetics听(with Diana Baker Smith). 2022
Amber Hammad, Speculative History and Critique of Gender in/out of Pakistan听(joint with Diana Baker Smith). 2022
Elena Gomez,听Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt: Gender, Labour and Inter-generationality in Marxist-feminist poetics, (joint with Astrid Lorange). 2019
Amy听Prcevich, Experiments with temporality of 'office work'听 (with Diana Baker Smith)听
HONOURS (ART HISTORY/THEORY)
Completed
Nicola Marshall, Gossip as Archival Method in Post-War Lebanese Contemporary Art, 2020
June Miskell,听Embodied听Knowledge And Collective Survival: Dance And Community In The Work Of Bhenji听Ra, 2019.
Evgenia听Anagnostopoulos,听Crisis and The Curatorial: Tracing Emergent Forms Of Institutional Activity in Athens,听2018.
Melissa Mills,听Performing and Contesting the Archive in Sites of Crisis, 2018.
Aneshka Mora,听Indigenous and Migrant Solidarity in Contemporary Australian Art, 2017.
Hannah Waters,听Visualising Necropolitics: Renzo Martens' Enjoy Poverty and Abbas Kiarostami's ABC Africa,听2017.
My Teaching
Tello convenes the following courses within the Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Art across art history/theory, curatorial and studio:听
- Australian Art,听1st year level (Art History/Theory)
- Global Contemporary Art,听3rd-year level (Art History/Theory) and Masters of Curating and Cultural Leadership
- Research Methods,听4th year/Honours level (Studio and Theory)
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