Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the work of one of Peru’s key Amazonian artists, Brus Rubio. His practice approaches issues of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, cities and knowledge production, in which he directly engages anthropology and art proposing new perspectives of the indigenous and humanity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the work, concepts and agendas of the Bora-Uitoto Brus Rubio, one of the most prominent Peruvian Amazonian artists. In exploring Rubio’s trajectory it sheds light on the expansion of the limits of contemporary art in Peru, the role of the city in the boost of Amazonian indigenous art and in its current global circulation, and explains the different strategies of the artists to position himself as an artist and as an indigenous. The paper explains how the relationship artist-indigeneity acquires diverse meaning/performativity in time as Rubio explores broader arenas and in relation to national and international policies. It also explores how Rubio’s work rethink his indigeneity in his long dialogue with anthropology.Moreover, it is this process of mobility and knowledge production that Brus Rubio opts to make the centre of his art practice, illuminating with his work discussion on transnationality, cosmopolitanism, epistemologies and ‘world-making.’ I elaborate on how Brus Rubio’s work is simultaneously based on a cosmopolitanism from below and on reflection of his transnational circulation as artist, proposing new perspectives and concepts of mutual understanding and cohabiting. This paper is based on my Marie Curie project ‘A collaborative approach of the aesthetical political dimension of Amazonian art’.