27. Colonizing Decolonization: The Invention of Indigenous Contemporary Art

The language of decolonization has become central to contemporary art discourse. Museums rebrand their collections, curators adopt indigenous terminology, and artists turn to pre-Columbian and Amerindian epistemologies to challenge Western aesthetic hierarchies. Yet one question persists: when indigenous concepts are extracted from their original epistemes, filtered through European, Western, or mainstream visual theory, and reincorporated as markers of identity or resistance, who benefits — and what is lost?

This session takes as its starting point the terms ixiptla, huaca, cemi, and yuxin — from unrelated indigenous cultures across the Americas — whose complex meanings have been progressively reduced, through Americanist scholarship and art history, to a single, marketable concept: the active, non-Western image opposed to its passive European counterpart. Following Carreón Blaine’s reading of the ixiptla, it tracks this reduction across historiography, curatorial practice, and artistic production in Latin America and beyond, revealing a pattern of epistemic appropriation in which the vocabulary of decolonization reproduces the extractive logic it claims to dismantle, raising questions about the historical efficacy of indigenous categories beyond their original contexts.

It invites proposals examining similar dynamics across geographies, media, and periods. We welcome art historians, curators, artists, and independent researchers questioning narratives that celebrate indigeneity uncritically or dismiss it as fashionable. Contributions from international and underrepresented backgrounds are encouraged.

Themes: Decoloniality, Indigenous Epistemologies, Epistemic Appropriation

Additional format comment: The half-day, in-person session opens with the convenors’ framing 5-10 minutes talk, followed by four 20-minute papers, leaving time for Q&A and discussion.

Lead Convenor: Patricia Angelina Lopez Sanchez Cervantes, University of St Andrews, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Emilie Anne Carreon Blaine, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.