MICHEL OTAYEK

Art Historian, Curator and Advisor

I am an art historian specializing in twentieth-century photography and print culture in Ibero-America. I earned a law degree from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (1999), followed by an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College (2012) and a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from New York University (2019).

My work examines the production and circulation of images from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on exile studies, gender studies, and cultural anthropology. A central focus of my research is the presence of Central European women photographers in Ibero-America during the twentieth century, especially the ways print culture markets facilitated women’s professionalization and creative agency. Within this context, I pay close attention to questions of transnational mobility and cultural exchange connecting Central Europe, Spain, and Latin America.

My publications span monographs and articles on photographers such as Kati Horna, Grete Stern, Barbara Brändli, and Thea Segall. Current book projects are "Camera Femina: Kati Horna y sus mujeres," in preparation, and "Vamos a ver. Federico Tell: An Exiled Photographer in 1940s Cuba," co-authored with Rahel Melis and forthcoming from Kerber Verlag in Berlin.

I am currently affiliated with Leibniz Universität Hannover as part of the DFG Research Unit TransExil: Negotiations of Aesthetics and Community in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. Within this framework, my research project (Mayan Fever: Aesthetic Interventions Amid the Bonampak Craze) examines overlapping exile networks involved in the (re)conceptualization of Indo- and Afro-American cultures in the 1940s and 1950s, with particular attention to how the illustrated press mediated debates about Mexico’s multicultural heritage.

My curatorial work includes "Told and Untold: The Photo Stories of Kati Horna in the Illustrated Press" (Americas Society, 2016), the first U.S. exhibition dedicated to the Hungarian-born Mexican photographer, and "Una Luz: Photography Under Confinement in Venezuela" (UT Austin Visual Arts Center, 2024).

I have also collaborated on institutional initiatives such as the Museo Reina Sofía’s online portals "Rethinking Guernica" (2017) and "Front and Rearguard: Women in the Spanish Civil War" (2021). In parallel, I maintain ongoing collaborations with contemporary artists in the Latin American diaspora that have resulted in exhibition and publication projects.

Alongside my academic work, I serve as an advisor to the Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna in Mexico City.