VCS Alumni Award
The Visual & Critical Alumni Award was established to annually recognize an alumni whose work after graduation from CCA exemplifies the interdisciplinary values of the VCS program and the dedication and scholarship demanded within the broader field of Visual and Critical Studies. This award recognizes the innovative and diverse ways VCS graduates mobilize the skills they honed and the ideas they germinated while at CCA in a broad range of creative and professional arenas, further evidencing the versatility of the degree and the luminosity of this community.
The VCS Class of 2023 is pleased to bestow this award on Dr. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa (Class of 2012)!
Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator, psychogeographer, and Miami native, currently based in Lodi, California. She obtained her doctorate of philosophy in Theater & Performance Studies with a minor in Art History from Stanford University. She holds a M.A. from California College of the Arts in Visual and Critical Studies and a B.A. from Brown University in an independent concentration entitled “Hybridity and Performance.” She is the recipient of the first-ever Stanford Theater & Performance Studies Department Carl Weber Prize for Integration of Creative Practice and Scholarly Research for her doctoral work and dissertation entitled Erotic Resistance: Performance, Art, and Activism, in San Francisco Strip Clubs, 1960s-2010s. Her M.A. thesis, Embodying Spaces: Memory and Resistance in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983), focused on cultural memory, embodiment, and the politics of space in relation to human rights activism, public art, and memorials in the aftermath of the dictatorship. Her work in performance and video has been presented nationally and internationally. She currently serves as Associate Director of Stanford University’s Division of Health and Human Performance where she leads LifeWorks. From 2002 to 2008, she directed her own arts organization (a)eromestiza, dedicated to presenting cutting edge video and performance by queer artists of color.
Past VCS alumni award recipients
2022
Dorothy R. Santos