The US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) is a vital network dedicated to art by US inhabitants of Latinx descent and their communities. We intentionally use the “x” in Latinx to make an expansive space for hanging out that fosters relationships within and beyond hemispheric American art.¹ Hanging out in this space generates new exhibitions, scholarship, programs and collaborations that advance the field into a dynamic future.

1. Hanging out is a fundamental strategy for USLAF. We are inspired by philosopher Maria Lugones’s observation of a figure she identifies as the “streetwalker theorist” who troubles and subverts the logics of institutional spaces by “hanging out” in them with “an ear and a tongue” attuned to “multiple lines of meaning.” As an organization dedicated to visual art, we believe that the eye may also be so attuned to multiple meanings that, in our case, might stand in for the “x” in Latinx. María Lugones, “Tactical Strategies of the Streetwalker/Estrategias Tacticas de la Callejera,” Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions, 2003, 207-37. ↩︎