Jesse Rocha is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Art and Architectural History at the University of Virginia. Under the direction of Dr. Tatiana Flores, he studies Latin American art history, with a specialization in contemporary Brazilian art. He is particularly interested in the era of dictatorships in late twentieth-century Latin America, and how queer artists used their work as a method of community-building and visual activism.  

 

Jesse comes to UVa with a B.A. in the History of Art from UC Berkeley (2017), and M.A. in the History of Art from UC Riverside (2022). His Masters thesis explored how gay Brazilian artists working at the junction of the military regime and HIV/AIDS crisis used various mediums as a form of documentation and self-preservation. He was a 2023-2024 Fulbright student researcher, which allowed him to conduct further research on the underground queer networks of São Paulo in the 1970-90's.