3. Affective Provocations: Conserving and caring for worlds in the Americas through Latin American Contemporary Art.

In recent years, growing scholarly and institutional interest in decolonial methodologies and more-than-human ethics has opened spaces for questioning what conservation and care mean, who defines them, which worlds they sustain, and what futures they seek to preserve. The works of indigenous artists such as Santiago Yahuarcani reflect on affective worlds obscured by dominant knowledge regimes, while embedding forms of knowledge, conservation, and care grounded in their worldviews. Cecilia Vicuña’s precarios, objects made to affect the present rather than an imagined future, challenge future-oriented conservation logics.

Questioning hegemonic conservation frameworks amid ecological and extractive crisis, this panel signals the need for alternative concepts of care and invites participants to reconsider conservation as an ongoing affective practice of sustaining, renewing, and giving life to territories, relatives, and objects. Understanding care as a nurturing collective responsibility, and engaging with relational ontologies articulated by thinkers such as Krenak, Bispo dos Santos, and Escobar, the session asks about forms of challenging dominant conservation paradigms to express care through a range of embodied and affective practices, including shamanic dreaming, singing, dance, and ritual action, functioning as sensory and spiritual world-balancing gestures, where knowledge is transmitted and territories are cared for, surpassing preservation frameworks.

We welcome critical contributions in dialogue with these concerns, particularly around how indigenous, Quilombola, Afro, and riverine communities’ ontologies activate collective knowledges through artistic practices and territorial relations, and how artist-community collaborations transform conservation through poetics and care. What methodological approaches do these works demand from scholars, curators, and institutions? We also warmly welcome provocations engaging specific artworks, territories, sensory experiences, and/or knowledge traditions beyond hegemonic paradigms.

Themes: Care, conservation, decolonial, art, relational ontologies, new methodologies in art history

Additional format comment: The provocation slot is an open-format intervention, including non-conventional scholarly contributions such as performance, song, oral narration, ritual, or s…The provocation slot is an open-format intervention, including non-conventional scholarly contributions such as performance, song, oral narration, ritual, or sensory engagement, alongside paper presentations or visual art. The framing invites participants to enact and present alternative conservation logics that resonate with these questions and formats, new methodologies in art history, more-than-human relations, and other forms of care in the arts.

Lead Convenor: Victoria Vargas Downing, Independent Researcher, United Kingdom/Chile

Co-convenors: Juliana Robles de la Pava, Bern Academy of the Arts, Switzerland

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.