Uneasy Dialogues across Ancient Art History, Archaeology, and Contemporary Art Practice in the Americas

Editorial

Abstract

The author lays out the problems and questions that prompted this special issue on “uneasy dialogues” across art history, archaeology, and contemporary art practice in the Americas. The art and visual culture of the Pre-Hispanic Americas is contested terrain. This essay discusses the temptation of “settler moves to innocence” in scholarship and in the contemporary art world. The author traces a surprising opportunity that emerges in a work by artist Gala Porras-Kim that, by accident, provides an ancient Moche captive bottle with conceptual liberation – not through return to bondage in northern Peru, but as escape to Yucatán. This text concludes by introducing the contents of this special issue that take the reader from the desert of New Mexico to the streets of Santiago de Chile.