Dr. Kaira M. Cabañas, associate professor in the School of Art + Art History, edited and wrote the afterword for the first-ever English translation of Jacques Derrida's seminal text, Artaud the Moma. Columbia University Press published and released the book earlier this September.
“Artaud the Moma was a conspicuous absence among the English translations of philosopher Jacques Derrida’s work,” Cabañas said. “Thus, I approached Columbia University Press about moving forward with a translation and serving as the volume’s editor.”
Cabañas previously co-curated an exhibition of the book’s titular artist, Antonin Artaud, at the Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain, titled Specters of Artaud: Language and the Arts in the 1950s.
According to Cabañas, in this text, Derrida focuses not only on Artaud’s aesthetic but also on the fact that Artaud’s “return to drawing” occurred when he was interned at a psychiatric clinic.
“Artaud le Moma will contribute to an understanding of what Artaud’s work signifies today,” Cabañas added. “That is, almost twenty years after Derrida delivered this text as a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but at a moment when the exhibition of modern psychiatric patients’ work is on the rise in global art exhibitions and contemporary biennials.”
Cabañas is a specialist in modern and contemporary art of the Americas and Europe. Her research and teaching engage a series of aesthetic and cultural debates that situate her work’s significance at the intersection of various disciplines, including art history, film studies, Latin American Studies, and, more recently, transatlantic exchanges in art and psychiatry.
For more information on Artaud the Moma, please click here.
