Maria Jose Contreras

María Jose Contreras Lorenzini is a Chilean performance artist and scholar. She holds a Ph.D from Università di Bologna and is Associate Professor at the Theater School at Universidad Católica de Chile. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University.

Using a wide range of formats, from massive public interventions to intimate actions of resistance, Contreras creatively explores the relation between the body and memory. Her work presented throughout the Americas and Europe include theatre productions, site-specific performances, durational performances, and urban interventions. She has published in international volumes such as Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times (Palgrave, 2017),  Frontières & dictatures. Images, regards (L’Harmattan, 2016), and has recently served as co-editor of Women Mobilizing Memory (Columbia University Press 2019). She has been recognized as one of the 70 most relevant international performance artists by The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader (Routledge 2020). More info at: www.mariajosecontreras.com