16 September – 16 December 2021
In the framework of Department Gerhard Wolf & 4A_Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics
Organized by Sanja Savkić Šebek (KHI in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut & Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) & Bat-ami Artzi (Dumbarton Oaks)
The KHI Amerindian Lecture Series 2021 is conceived as a forum to reflect on Indigenous arts/visual cultures and aesthetic practices created on the American continent, past and present. It gathers scholars who present novel research in/linking art history, anthropology/ethnology, (ethno)history, archaeology, museum studies, artistic and curatorial work, as well as other areas of inquiry concerned with images and artifacts and their handling. The diversity and richness of indigenous ‘visual modes’ across the continent is shown through a range of case studies which serve as a starting point to develop methodological and conceptual tools for the study of a variety of subjects, such as: the relationship of Amerindian art and ritual, and a specific ontology of images; the relation between aesthetics, cosmology and ecology; the encounter between Amerindian and European artistic and scriptural conventions; representations of connectedness of native practices across time and space in different media; the tension between locality and globality; pattern and form; politics of display; memory, identity, gender, ethnicity and violence in visual manifestations, among other themes. The studies break the artificial borders between fine art and craft, and question scholarly canons, as well as museal and exhibitory forms.