“BEFORE THE WORLD DIDN'T EXIST" – CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS ART, MUSEUMS AND DECOLONIALITIES

Abstract

Brazilian art museums have been undergoing significant transformations over the past five years. These transformations are driven by new exhibition strategies adopted by institutions and the presence of new artists, sometimes organized into collectives and previously objectified only in ethnographic collections. These changes occur in the wake of a scenario of international appreciation for indigenous peoples and identity issues, which has created new possibilities for the local art system. With this work, we seek to better understand which narratives are activated to legitimize this new scenario by analyzing institutional material, drawing on field observations, including those conducted with some artists and curators involved in this process, and reflecting on the consequences of these changes. We can conclude that activating decolonial discourse is neither sufficient nor imperative to explain these transformations; rather, it is a market-driven tool to enable new chains of production and circulation of goods within the art market.