This seminar will be a hybrid event where the speaker will be presenting in-person and the talk will be streamed via zoom. Those who want to attend physically are more than welcome to join us in meeting room 929 at Eilert Sundt’s building.
Abstract
This talk explores the role of dreams in the practice of some Amazonian indigenous artists in terms of place of creativity, connection and accountability with the ancestors and other beings. What do Amazonian people mean by ‘dreams’? What is the relationship between creativity and knowledge, and what happens in dreams? Can we understand dreams in terms of place-making and platforms for creative networking with others? This paper also seeks to shed light on the role of night in its interconnection to dreams but also beyond. Based on long collaboration with indigenous artists and intellectuals, this paper will shed light in these questions rethinking the textures and creative power of dreams and night for Amazonian indigenous art production. It also argues that the shamanic trope in understanding the Amazon has overshadowed the analysis of dreaming. This paper seeks to contribute to what Orobitg and Cecconi has called a “resistance from anthropology to elaborate a methodology and theoretical corpus about dreaming” (EASA panel OP060, 2024).
Drawing on anthropology, art history and indigenous knowledges and art production, this paper will also establish comparison with other indigenous art practices in which dreaming are central such as in the Australian aboriginal paintings. This presentation is part of the second phase of the Amazonart project – www.amazonart-project.com, and of my current monographs in Peru´s Amazonian indigenous art, spatial politics and practices.
Biography
Dr Giuliana Borea is a Lecturer in Latin American Studies at Newcastle University and an Affiliated Lecturer in Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Her research concerns the political economy of contemporary art worlds and their transnational networks; museum theories, politics and practices; place-making and sensory knowledge with a focus on Latin America, particularly Peru. Her latest project, Amazonart, was recipient of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. She has been Peru’s Director of Museums and Cultural Heritage and Coordinator of the Lima Contemporary Art Museum. She sits at the EASA´s Art and Anthropology Network Committee.
She is the editor of Arte y Antropología: Estudios, Encuentros y Nuevos Horizontes (PUCP 2017), co-editor of Antropologías Visuales Latinoamericanas: Estudios, Genealogías y Enseñanza (FLACSO/PUCP, in press) and the author of Configuring the New Lima Art Scene: An Anthropological Analysis of Latin American Contemporary Art (Routledge, 2021), recently translated to Spanish as La nueva escena artística de Lima. Prácticas, museos y mercado.
Read more: Giuliana Borea | Newcastle University - Academia.edu