Paper short abstract:

Highlighting the heterogeneity of Amazonian contemporary art, this talk explores the work and the ways in which three Huitoto artists dialogue with, distance from, and impact on their local communities as they navigate in the contemporary art system.

Paper long abstract:

This talk explores the artistic process and work of three Huitoto artists - Santiago Yahuarcani, Rember Yahuarcani (his son), and Brus Rubio (a Bora Huitoto artist) - by focusing on the different ways in which they dialogue with, distance from, and impact on their local indigenous communities as they navigate in the contemporary art system and transnational artistic networks. I will focus on the artists' decisions and compositions in providing a visual-material figuration to un-fixed beings, oral narratives, as well as to historical memory and various other community and personal experiences. In this way, my talk intends to move beyond the specific focus of an ayahuasca-shamanic Amazonian art, to explore the artists' heterogeneous narratives, aesthetics, politics, and tactics. I also address their strategic use and tensions with "the indigenous", their links with academic narratives, and highlight the political-aesthetical impacts of their work.