Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1137-4388; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3005-6537
Abstract
This article examines the artistic production of three Latin American artists, two Brazilians and one Chilean: Rosana Paulino (1967-), Moara Tupinambá (1983-), and Cecilia Vicuña (1948-). Vicuña and Tupinambá, artists of Indigenous descent, incorporate the epistemologies of native peoples into their works, considering the differences in ethnicity, territory, and generation that distinguish them. Paulino, in turn, a Black woman from the outskirts of São Paulo (SP/Brazil), addresses issues related to Black ancestry in her artistic production, particularly those linked to the experiences of enslaved African populations. Despite the distinct trajectories of these artists, a common element emerges in their artistic practices: the central role of memory. The intellectual inquiry that guides their work stems from the search for ancestry and from the questions and learnings that shaped their childhoods. Their works frequently engage with ancestral knowledge, such as that of Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans—epistemologies historically silenced by European colonization and imperialist logic. These localized knowledges, embedded in experience, manifest in an unresolved but expanded form, as proposed by Rivera Cusicanqui, allowing the coexistence of differences and oppositions from a non-pacifying perspective. For this study, we chose to highlight issues present in the artists’ production through an analysis of three specific works: Cecilia Vicuña’s quipus, Moara Tupinambá’s Museu da Silva, and Rosana Paulino’s installation Parede da Memória. From these works, we pose the following questions: how do these artists engage with memory? What visions of the future emerge from their works? This article seeks to reflect on these questions through a selection of works by three Latin American women whose artistic practices align with a decolonial perspective, challenging historically subalternized epistemologies. The objective is not to investigate the immediate demands of the present but rather to engage in a materialist-historical exercise that reclaims and rearticulates the epistemologies and ancestries of Black and Indigenous peoples within artistic practice.
Recommended Citation
Amormino, Luciana and Cavalcanti, Anna
(2025)
"Decolonizing the Future Through the Memory of Subalternized Knowledges:
Looking at the Production of Three Latin American Artists from a
Decolonial Perspective,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
46, Article 23.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2172
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss46/23
