Paper short abstract:

Moving from a collaborative ethnography and artistic production with Mapuche artists and activists in the urban context of Santiago (Chile), the paper explores a shared elaboration of decolonial epistemologies and political aesthetics beyond common representations of indigeneity.

Paper long abstract:

Moving from the significance of collective creative work, the project MapsUrbe: The invisible City collaboratively engaged in the elaboration of decolonial epistemologies and representations with young Mapuche artists and activists in the urban context of Santiago, Chile. Addressing indigenous migration to the capital city through practice-based methods and multimodal ethnography, the project resulted in a site-specific performance and an artistic exhibition. In the context of this artistic productions, subterranean narratives emerged, pointing at indigenous mobility and practices of place-making within the city. These subversive political aesthetics allowed thinking beyond common representations of indigeneity, producing alternative imaginations claiming for mixture and non-whiteness under the skin of the nation, interrogating at the same time anthropological, artistic and activist practices and the interconnections between them.By analysing this process, in which co-theorization (Rapport 2008) and collective thinking and writing (Deger 2019) play a fundamental role, the paper elaborates on ethnographic and performative methodologies of co-creation, exploring the possibilities and challenges of a meaningful collaboration between an anthropologist and indigenous artists and activists. How do these research practices challenge and rework the concept and practice of indigeneity? How do co-elaborated political aesthetics enable us to rethink the categories of both ethnographic and artistic practices? What do they allow to emerge within a particular context of (unequal) knowledge production, and yet which dynamics of power and inequality still result inescapable?