ABSTRACT
Discussions of contemporary Latinx art and politics are burdened with not only defining the peoples, histories, and practices that compose the broad spectrum of communities and concerns that are bundled together in the term Latinx, but must also contend with shifting identities, nationalist intentions, and homogenizing political projects. Beginning with a reflection on the development of Latinx as a term and political project, in contrast to brownness as an emergent field of study which seeks to circumvent the colonial and nationalist shortcomings of Latinx, I argue that what influences brown art and activism is not only brownness as an embodied reality which is performed at different and occasionally competing scales, but brownness as a practice of political feeling and refusal. Writing about my own work in East Boston, MA supporting housing insecure Latinx immigrant communities, and in relation to the work of other brown artist-activists, such as Regina Galindo and Robert Legorreta, this article seeks to articulate how brown artists and activists have refused the pitfalls of identarian rhetoric while rooting themselves in willful acts of public refusal.
