Reconfigurations of Time: Reflections on the Exhibition, Arts of Resistance: Politics and the Past in Latin America, UBC Museum of Anthropology

Abstract

This article reflects on the exhibition Arts of Resistance: Politics and the Past in Latin America, showing how the project challenged common representations of Central and South American art and history by displaying local, often Indigenous, ways of managing cultural heritage, as well as some of the ways that ancestral knowledge and popular arts are used to document and resist political realities. Furthermore, it argues for the overt politicization of museological and exhibitionary perspectives using radical cosmopolitical theory. Through this framework, I argue for the political significance of the art forms included in the exhibition that champion local philosophies and positions in the face of various forms of marginalization.

Keywords

• central and south american museum archaeology, critical museology, decolonising methodologies, indigenous art, local heritage management, political museology, radical cosmopolitics