Student profile
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Marco Antonio Giovanetti
I am a Master’s student specializing in narcoaesthetics and Colombian contemporary art. My research investigates how visual and material cultures associated with drug trafficking such as ornament, jewelry, gold, ceramics, and digital interfaces operate as aesthetic and ideological technologies that both aestheticize and obscure violence. Grounded in decolonial theory, political theology, abolitionist aesthetics, and media theory, my work examines how narco-visual culture produces regimes of shine, spectacle, and artificial transcendence linked to colonial histories and racial capitalism.
I am particularly concerned with questions of ethics, representation, memory, and the archive, as well as the role of contemporary art in confronting histories of paramilitarism, extractivism, and illicit economies.
Thesis Title: Gleaming Economies: Narcoaesthetic Intimacies from Gold to Blockchain
Supervisor: Dr. Rebecca Duclos
Research Interests:
- Narcoaesthetics and Visual Culture
- Violence, Spectacle, and Aestheticization
- Colonialism, Racial Capitalism, and Visual Regimes
- Theological Aesthetics and Sanctified Violence
- Ornament, Shine, and Surface (from artisanal craft to digital interfaces and NFTs)
- Art and Illicit Economies
- Visual Culture of Paramilitarism and Narco-Governance
Teaching Assistantships:
- ARTH 398/2: Special Topic in Art & Society: Post-revolutionary and Contemporary Mexican Art, Instructor: Nuria Carton de Grammont, Ph.D. Fall 2024
- ARTH 365/2 Studies in 17th-18th Century Art and Architecture, Instructor: Laurence Garneau, PhD. Fall 2024
Publications:
- Exhibition review essay of Rajni Perera’s Futures ( June 15th, 2024 to September 8th 2024) in the Musée d'art de Joliette for Espace Art Actuel magazine. Winter 2025 edition.
- Exhibition review essay of Moridja Kitenge Banza’s Exiled in Eden (October 5th 2024 to January 12th 2025) in the Musée d'art de Joliette for Esse magazine, issue 114
- Exhibition review essay of Michael Belmore: bzaan-yaa / en silence, immobile / be quiet, be still (January 17 - April 12, 2025) in Daphne Centre for Esse magazine, issue 115.
- “Beyond the Beat: Photography, Parangolés, and the Politics of Brazilian Rave Culture”, Third Floor Journal
- The Colonial Dream, Rubber Boom, and Racial Capitalism: MAHKU’s Abolitionist Aesthetics. Invisible Culture: A Journal for Visual Culture. Submitted for peer review, 2025.
Conferences & Podcast Participation:
- Panelist, 30th Annual History in the Making Graduate Conference, “Creolized Violence: Sicario Culture, Art, and the Legacies of Colonialism in Colombia.” Concordia University, Montreal, April 4–5, 2025.
- Participant in the round table Material of Refusal: Observations on Iconography of Resistance , Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC) Annual Conference, Toronto, Ontario (October 2025)
- Paper: The Colonial Dream, Rubber Boom and Racial Capitalism: The Art and Activism of the MAHKU Collective
- Guest Participant, Annexes Podcast, Season 5 – “Decolonization,” MUPANAH & Narco-Aesthetics.
- Shine and Violence: Narcoaesthetic Imaginaries in Contemporary Colombian Art. The Image Conference, Sorbonne University, Paris, France, September 2025