Paper short abstract:

Two Amerindian mummified bodies are shown in glass display cases in Carmo Archaeological Museum (Lisbon) without any mention to ethical questions posed by the exhibition of Indigenous human remains. A project of theory, art, and activism questions historical unbalances, facing decolonial challenges.

Paper long abstract:

The Carmo Archaeological Museum (in Lisbon) was created in the 19th century to save national archaeological heritage. Other items were added to the collection, including the mummified bodies of two young Amerindians of the Chancay culture (from Peru), acquired during a diplomatic mission of one of the museum founders to South America (1878-1879). Today, the bodies are exhibited in display cases with little contextualization, in the centre of a room designed in 2001 to replicate a period library, surrounded by a display with Chancay artefacts, bookshelves with 19th century Archaeology, Geography and Anthropology books, a statue of a Portuguese king and a series of golden framed portraits of prominent museum board members of that era (all males, white men, and old aristocrats/bourgeois people). The exhibition of Indigenous bodies as objects prolongs the historical narrative that legitimized the colonial order. As artists and academics, we have proposed to the Carmo Museum to develop a project with critical research about these issues, which was met with several limitations. This presentation will expose the challenges of working with/against the institution, the decolonizing goals and limits of the project, problems of representation posed by a culture without living descendants, and the outcome of the project. This artivist (art + activist) project — called THE TIME OF THE HUACAS — included performance, video art and an independent publication (the unofficial guide to Carmo Museum's Room 4). It was done with the participation of Amerindian artists, museum professionals and visual/museum theorists.

Project website: https://sites.google.com/view/otempodashuacasenglish/about