The The persuasive power of an image: hostipitality and conviviality in Ana Teresa Fernández’s At the Edge of Distance (2022)

Abstract

As the mainstream representations of the contested space of the U.S.-Mexico border often neglect to reflect the diversity of border stories and miss rhetorical dimension, the aim of this paper is to analyze Ana Teresa Fernández’s most recent act of border artivism – her performance, At the Edge of Distance (2022) and its documentation, from the visual rhetoric’s perspective. This analysis is to examine the argumentative power of images created by the artist as well as their function. The article explores versatile border stories Fernández’s paintings convey and analyzes how they function as a call for action – to challenge hostipitality Latinx experience in the U.S. and replace it with acts of transborder conviviality.

Keywords

• visual rhetoric
• hostipitality
• the Latino Threat Narrative
• artivism
• the U.S-Mexico border
• Latinx artists