Amazons
Debates about representation
Indigenous art and subjectivities
In the framework of the exhibition Amazonias. The Ancestral Future, we’re organizing a cycle of three interdisciplinary seminars in collaboration to Espai Avinyó with the participation of indigenous artists, curators and professionals in the field of culture to debate forms of presenting and representing indigenous subjectivity.
This cycle picks up debates to have emerged at the 60th Venice Biennale, where the presence of indigenous art on the international art scene has become a theme of criticism and public reflection. What does it mean to be indigenous or peripheral in the contemporary world? Is this representation a new chapter in the history of art or a cultural hegemony strategy? Are we looking at a form of cultural extractivism that appropriates aesthetics and knowledge to pay off colonial debts? Can indigenous cosmologies offer a critical platform to question modernity? How do indigenous art and subjectivity fit into the logics of reception of academic and museum spaces in the European context? How do the notions of nature, territory, peoples and future translate into Western museographic forms?
Over three sessions, discussion will centre on ways to move away from the stereotypical colonial representations that continue to prevail in many cultural institutions. It will amplify the voices of indigenous artists to reflect on how their works can destabilize the hegemonic narratives relegating non-Western cultures to subordinate positions, and converse with the city’s cultural agents to debate—and question—the various frameworks of representation.
In this cycle, the CCCB and Espai Avinyó set out to critically review the role of cultural institutions in the representation of subjectivities that have historically been excluded, and to create spaces for critical debate and intercultural learning.
This activity is part of Amazons