Revista Convocarte nº 20/21 – Art and Indigenous Peoples // open call

OPEN CALL > UNTIL 17th JULY 2026

Submission Deadlines

July 17, 2026 – Submission of the initial proposal (title, abstract, and keywords; max. 1000 characters without spaces) and link to curriculum vitae/portfolio.

October 9, 2026 – Submission of the complete text.

Send to: convocarte.belasartes@gmail.com

Manifesto for a Call for Papers: Art and Indigenous Peoples

Art. The relationship between art and indigenous peoples is not a simple one. In a programme text for the anthropology of art, Els Lagrou (2012) measured the impact of Alfred Gell’s (2018) work in the field, speaking of a love-hate relationship between art and anthropology. The conjunction ‘and’, which is employed to link the concepts of art and indigenous peoples in this particular context, functions in an adversative manner rather than an additive one. 

Indigenous peoples. This gives rise to the primary issue of this call. The question thus arises of whether the artistic expression in question is to be considered as antagonistic towards indigenous peoples, or whether the indigenous perspective is in opposition to that of the artistic expression. In the context of the Manchester debate on the ‘universality of the concept of aesthetics/art’ (Ingold, 1996), Lagrou (2012) poses the question of whether there exists an art of societies that functions in opposition to the state. This perspective aligns with the seminal work of Pierre Clastres (2003), who proposed a novel characterisation of the political (or cosmopolitical) organisation of the indigenous peoples of America as ‘societies against the state’. This alternative expression diverges from the conventional evolutionary term ‘stateless societies’. 

Land. This shift in perspective enables Clastres (Idem) to redefine the question of how to define ‘what is’ an indigenous people or ‘who are’ indigenous people, bringing it closer to contemporary reality. Rather than being museum pieces echoing the past of a single ‘humanity’ definitively separated from the cosmos, these peoples point to the future of planetary politics. 

Cosmophobia. Deleuze & Guattari (1976), based on what Clastres (2003) and Lévi-Strauss (1976) had learnt from the Amerindians, redefine these societies against the State as a territorial social formation, highlighting these peoples’ intrinsic relationship with the land, in contrast to the modern State and its cosmophobic origin/foundation, as defined by Nego Bispo (Santos, 2018).

Cosmopolitical. The proposal is to engage in discourse with indigenous peoples, transcending the conventional discourse surrounding them, and to recognise these interlocutors as being defined by their intrinsic relationship with the land, with this relationship acting as the guiding principle for their knowledge practices. It is acknowledged that these interlocutors represent the various modes of existence that articulate and establish territory through these human communities and individuals.

Anthropocene. In a manner analogous to the manner in which modern thought was transfigured by the problem-concept of the Anthropocene, thereby resulting in the definitive burial of the 20th century with the realisation that, ultimately, ‘we had never been modern’ and fulfilling Lévi-Strauss’ (1976) persistent prophecy that mythological thought would ‘meet again’ with scientific thought, contemporary art has also been decisively affected by the problem-works posed by contemporary indigenous art. 

(Amilton Mattos) 

Call for Papers

The contemporary global concept of ‘Art’ is a recent Western paradigm. Following the conceptualisation of Fine Arts during the Renaissance, the notion of art and the autonomy of the artistic sphere gained prominence in the 18th century. The following discussion will explore the question of whether it is possible to discuss art in relation to indigenous cultures. In the event of the existence of artistic dimensions, it is imperative to elucidate the manner in which they are mobilised and comprehended. In this sense, the cultural milieu of an indigenous people or nation can be perceived as a confrontation with the very concept of ‘Art’ and its concomitant comforts.

What is the basis of artistic productions inscribed in the body and the landscape, merging with them, creating disturbances in the arts of the separation between work and subject, production and reception, etc.? Talking about indigenous culture and its artefacts with an artistic dimension can serve to problematise the guaranteed notions of ‘art’, “work”, ‘author’, etc. 

The separations between arts are also problematised, since there is a foundational mode of relations and fusions between arts that have traditionally been separated in the West. It’s not a question of hybridity, which is already the result of a principle of separation and its disturbance, but something that is based on non-separation. Thus, in the face of indigenous culture, it is Western ontologies, works and relational processes, as well as values and symbolic exchanges, among others, that are unsettled. One of the premises of this call is to find these zones of disquiet, as vacillating states that are interesting not only to understand but also to confront.

Any recent tradition of Anthropology recognises that these cultures are not watertight in a repetition of the same, but rather have transformation at their core, in which ritual practices of cultural continuity and survival have their own internal dynamic. The repetition of ritual, as a cultural pursuit, is the foundation of processes of transformation and it is through this repetition that the same and the ‘new’ are offered as cultural pursuit and continuity.

The invocation of indigenous culture, coupled with the assumption of its distinctiveness, engenders a relational expanse that renders the prevailing Western paradigm both relative and susceptible to scrutiny. The objective is not merely to challenge this prevailing paradigm, but rather to reject its exclusivity and the authority of its voice, thereby facilitating a more inclusive listening process. This endeavour entails the liberation of artefacts from the paradigm of the cabinet of curiosities that persists in Western ethnographic and anthropological museums. The resolution of this issue necessitates the establishment of a relationship of alterity that fosters the reciprocal exchange of difference, thereby facilitating a mutual extension. This approach entails the rejection of a unidirectional gaze of curiosity or the scientific object, in favour of an egalitarian and dialoguing relationship, wherein the experience and voice of the other is inscribed and shared. 

In general, indigenous cultures are about Memory rather than History, orality rather than writing. It is the bodies that support and carry cultural mediations, that aggregate memories and transfer them. Culture as a safeguard of the self is often made from these bodies, with responsibilities of transference and continuity, which is always fatal change, but inherent and genuine.

When it comes to indigenous peoples, there is a natural tendency for studies to focus on the global South, tending to include Central and South America, Africa, Australia and much of the Pacific, or even parts of Indonesia or India. But it can also be seen elsewhere, even if in an almost archaeological way, around echoes of massacred indigenous memories, such is the degree of cultural disappearance or extinction in many cases, such as in Canada and, above all, the United States. 

Thinking about the role of art and culture in indigenous peoples often involves their resistance to Western and global colonial violence, which can be done both from the strength of their own survival, from what are often resilient remains, and from their regeneration, their recovery from a situation of near cultural extinction, taking up possible authenticities that are not reduced to modes of business and exotic neo-tourism. 

Another issue is the problem of the periphery in cultural issues or cultural policy. Not the periphery between the big dominant centres, which decide the historical, economic and symbolic values of art and culture, such as that of Portuguese art in relation to that of France, London or the United States, or of Brazil in relation to European and North American art, or between Eastern and Western arts or those of the South and those of the North, or even of the big centres in relation to small towns, but a more radical periphery: the periphery that touches the place of obliterated difference and its survival. A periphery that is often already on the outside, in a kind of total otherness. But that’s the richness of its voice.

We can therefore put forward a number of topics, with the proviso that these are far from limiting the possibilities of approaching the subject:

• Conceptual understanding: The dimensions of the notion of ‘indigenous’ and its cultural and artistic specificities.
• Places of Art: Studying the modes and spaces of artistic production among indigenous peoples.
• Identity and Transmission: Processes of subjectivation and cultural dialogues 
• Alterity and Relativisation: The confrontation of differences as a way of broadening the possibilities of human culture.
• Survival and Regeneration: Artistic production as a cultural and political act of resistance and recovery in the face of the threat of extinction.
• Geographies of Indigenous Art: Analysing different contexts and scales (from Brazil to Australia, from Canada to Southeast Asia).
• Methodological Decolonisation: Revision of concepts from anthropology and ethnography in favour of a deontology that privileges the voice of the ‘other’ as a cultural and artistic subject and not just an object of study.

Convocarte Team
General Coordination: Fernando Rosa Dias
Co-coordination (French section): Pascal Krajewski
Executive Coordination: Bruna Lobo and Jamila Pontes

Coordination of the thematic dossier Art and Indigenous Peoples: 

Amilton Pelegrino de Mattos is a researcher and lecturer in the Indigenous Degree programme at the Federal University of Acre, UFAC – Floresta Campus. PhD in Anthropology from the PPGSA at UFRJ – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, with a thesis dedicated to the research processes of indigenous academics in their communities. http://lattes.cnpq.br/4467650905915696

References used in ‘Manifesto for a call for papers: Art and Indigenous Peoples’:

• Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2009). The Climate of History: Four Theses. In: Critical inquiry 35.2: 197-222.
• Clastres, Pierre (2003). A sociedade contra o Estado. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify. 
• Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix (1976) O Anti-édipo. Capitalismo e esquizofrenia, Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora Ltda. 
• Ingold, Kim (Ed.) (1996). Key debates in Anthropology. London and New York: Routledge.
• Gell, Alfred. (2018). Arte e agência: uma teoria antropológica. Trad. Jamille Pinheiro Dias. São Paulo: Unu Editora.
• Kopenawa, Davi & Albert, Bruce (2015). A queda do céu: palavras de um xamã yanomami. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
• Lagrou, E. (2012). Existiria uma arte das sociedades contra o Estado?. Revista De Antropologia, 54(2). https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2011.39645
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1976). O pensamento selvagem. São Paulo: CEN. 
• Santos, Antônio Bispo dos. (2018). Somos da terra. Piseagrama, Belo Horizonte, n.12, p.44-51. https://piseagrama.org/artigos/somos-da-terra/

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