Fernanda Villarroel

Fernanda Villarroel is a PhD candidate in Art History with a Minor in African Studies Program and a Master in the Anthropology Department. The support of various FLAS scholarship has allowed her to study Yoruba and Hausa languages in order to study contemporary art as a vital social response to the living conditions in Lagos, Nigeria. Her research focuses on the particular practice of repurposing debris from global capitalism and urban waste into works of art. This mode of aesthetic transformation is bound up with ordinary recycling for everyday use, while to live in Lagos entails devising creative ways of dealing with corruption, failing infrastructures, and urban waste. As a practice that materially works between the dumpsite and the art museum and gallery, the repurposing of debris into works of art may convert decay into capital, but, in doing so, it is also a political tactic for social justice.