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P061


Amazonian Contemporary Art, and its Impacts in Fixing Imaginaries in Transmutational Cultures 
Convenor:
Giuliana Borea (Newcastle University Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)
Format:
Panels
Location:
SOAS Senate House - S209
Sessions:
Saturday 2 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

This panel explores how Amazonian contemporary art is participating and influencing other sensory-aesthetic registers in Amazonian communities, particularly mythology, ritual and shamanism, as it examines the impacts of fixing imaginaries when transmutation is central to Amazonian ontologies.

Long Abstract:

Today Amazonian contemporary art is acquiring more visibility as it circulates through national and international art venues. The growing interest and awareness on Amazonian ontologies by academia and art platforms with the influential studies of Descola (2006) and Viveiros de Castro (2009) are helping, but difficulties in improving the protocols of showing, writing and understanding Amazonian art in the Western art world still remain. As scholarly attention is driven by this international mobility of indigenous art, this panel aims, however, to change the focus back to the indigenous communities and explores the different ways in which Amazonian indigenous art and artists impact their own collectivities not only in socio- economic terms but particularly in its owns ontological and epistemological dimensions.

The panel seeks to explore two aspects of the same phenomena, examining (i) how Amazonian art, particularly in its forms of figuration participates and influences other sensory-aesthetic and performative registers such as mythology, ritual and shamanism, as well as on fixing imaginaries when transmutation or metamorphosis of bodies, behavior and senses is central to Amazonian cosmopolitics; (ii) examining Amazonian art as a device for incorporating alterity in terms of subjects, objects and techniques (exogenous landscapes, modern technologies, perspective, oil painting, etc.).

Some of the questions that this panel seeks to approach are what does art do in stabilizing imaginaries? How do artists represent mutable and non-visual beings? how does art impact other sensory- aesthetics practices? and, how does the agency of Amazonian art enact in its own sociocultural environment?

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Saturday 2 June, 2018, -