Curating 'We live like trees in the footsteps of our ancestors'

WEBINAR SERIES 2023 | The Indigenous Gaze: decolonising visual cultures

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Curating 'We live like trees in the footsteps of our ancestors'

Dr. Marianna Tsionki & Dr. Mariana Cunha

The paper will discuss aspects of the curatorial project We live like trees in the footsteps of our ancestors; an ongoing investigation on forms of ecological thinking in artistic practices, and the extent to which environmental shifts and crises come to bear on contemporary art from Latin America. The project is concerned with the dialogues between cultural production, natural environment, and modes of decolonial thinking. By examining the link between artistic practices and the environment in Latin America, this body of work contributes to a decentred knowledge production, while also providing a crucial stance from the Global South.

Drawing on the anthropological and philosophical works of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway, it will consider some indigenous artistic practices, more particularly on the works of Daiara Tukano, Seba Calfuqueo, and Amaru Cholango. Daiara Tukano’s practice operates at the intersection of art and activism. She has built alliances to encourage the creation of strategies that can contribute to the protection of mother nature, cultural diversity and human rights across the vast region of the Amazonas. Seba Calfuqueo’s artistic practice is proposing a decolonial view through critically questioning the colonial order and its consequences in the indigenous societies. They are interested in the study of race, gender, social class, and their political, social and cultural implications. Amaru Cholango’s performative practice deals with questions of ancestry, shamanism, and rituals. By examining these practices in relation to their respective cosmovisions, we will raise timely questions regarding the ethical role of curatorial practices in face of our epistemic constructions and propose routes to think new avenues to present non-Western works.

Webinar Session moderated by Dr. Rashmi Viswanathan

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About the Speakers

Dr. Mariana Cunha is a Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Westminster and a researcher at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM). She has a PhD with a focus on Brazilian Cinema and a MA in Cultural and Critical Studies from Birkbeck, University of London. She held two postdoctoral fellowships in Brazil before joining the University of Westminster. Her recent research addresses the relationship between cinematic affect, spatial practices, and ecological visualities, particularly the role of nature and the nonhuman in contemporary global cinema and screen arts from Latin America. She co-edited the books Space and Subjectivity in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Human Rights, Social Movements and Activism in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Mariana also contributes to film festivals and screenings as a film programmer in Brazil and in the UK.

Dr. Marianna Tsionki is a curator, researcher and educator working at the intersection of contemporary art, ecology and technology. She has extensive experience (more than ten years) in curating exhibitions, engagement and public programmes nationally and internationally with particular focus on environmental discourse and art practices. Her background in art theory, visual culture and eco-aesthetics combined with her PhD in Curatorial Studies -focused on methodologies of alter-institutionality and the implementation of postcolonial ecological principles through curatorial programmes puts her in a unique position to co-develop and co-produce this body of research. She has previously conducted fieldwork in the politics of extractivism and more particularly in East Asia, Greece and the UK on the subject of post-industrial landscapes and sacrifice zones, and in Africa on the global politics of electronic waste and cheap technology. Her PhD developed a critique on the concept of the Anthropocene, proposed a critical curatorial theory of bringing together the local and the global (glocal) and discussed curatorial research as knowledge production within and beyond institutions. She is interested in eco-femininst practices, indigenous Naturecultures and local ecological knowledge as methods of developing kinship networks and interspecies (plant/animal/human) modes of life.

[Moderator] 

Dr. Rashmi Viswanathan is the Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Hartford. She focuses on modern histories of transnational exchange in the arts, with a focus on South Asia.

Image © Caroline Monnet, History Shall Speak for Itself II, 2018