Outstanding Art History Project History and Art History

Alice Farinhas has completed both her bachelor's in history and master's in art history at George Mason, recently graduating with her M.A. in December 2025. During her time at Mason, she had the opportunity to study abroad at the 2024 Venice Biennale and intern for Mason Exhibitions, both of which deepened her interest in contemporary art. Her graduate research focused on modern and contemporary Latin American art, addressing broader questions of transnational exchange, decoloniality, and global artistic networks. Last fall, she completed an independent study under the guidance of Dr. Michele Greet. The concluding paper, "Knots as Knowing: Materiality, Ritual, and Decolonial Imagination," focuses on contemporary Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña and examines how her quipu installations engage with Indigenous visual languages to address themes of memory, identity, and history in Chile and the Global South. 

Following graduation, she is focusing on beginning her career in the museum field and continuing her research in Latin American art, examining how diverse artists and collectives use their own artistic languages to imagine decolonial futures and redefine art’s role in memory, activism, and cultural survival.