An examination of art's evolving role in theorizing decolonization, with Afro-diasporic and Indigenous perspectives in Latin America at its center. 

Unmaking to Make reorients global conversations on decolonization by centering Afro-diasporic and Indigenous perspectives from across Latin America. Through a wide-ranging selection of texts, including critical essays, curatorial reflections, and interviews, it explores how artistic practice actively theorizes, models, and enacts alternative modes of living. Showcases cutting-edge work of emerging artists and curators, currently under-recognized in North American and European contexts. The volume establishes new reference points, methodologies, and institutional models for the next generation of scholars. By mapping forthcoming debates and potential institutional shifts, the book provides forward-looking insights into where and how decolonial thought will unfold in the years to come.

Alex Ungprateeb Flynn is associate professor of art and anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. María Iñigo Clavo is a writer, curator, and associate professor of arts and humanities at the Open University of Catalunya in Barcelona, in a collaborative program with Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. Beatriz Lemos is a coordinating curator at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil. Florencia Portocarrero is a writer, curator, and lecturer for the Master's in Art History and Curating at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

List of figures List of contributors

Introduction: Artistic practice and the unmaking of coloniality
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, María Iñigo Clavo, Beatriz Lemos and Florencia Portocarrero

Part I: Counter-genealogies

1 Counter-histories, ‘Maya hackers’ and everyday life resistances
María Jacinta Xón Riquiac
2 Crossroads of popular arts: cultural resistance, artisanal practices and the racialisation of developmentalism in Ecuador
María Elena Bedoya Hidalgo and Pamela Cevallos Salazar
3 From decentralised mestizajes in Peru to mestizo masks in the Spanish pavilion. Some genealogical routes of the decolonial in Latin American art
Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, María Iñigo Clavo and Agustín Pérez Rubio in conversation
4 Tracing the encontronazo, a Ladino genealogy of Afro-diasporic female art through Leliá González's Améfricade
Karo Moret Miranda

Part II: Institutions amidst colonial legacies

5 Reconsidering the ‘art museum’. Some reflections on the history of the MALI collections
Ricardo Kusunoki and Sharon Lerner
6 Community of praxis: integrating Indigenous knowledge in the management of the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz
Elvira Espejo Ayca and Florencia Portocarrero in conversation
7 Museums under construction María Berríos and Pablo Lafuente in conversation 8 The ‘Indigenous turn’ and the rise of Amazonian art: insights from the seminal work of the Seminario de Historia Rural Andina (SHRA)
Gabriela Germaná and Florencia Portocarrero

Part III: The decolonisation of language and vocabularies of power

9 About what we can say
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro
10 Tzitzimime Trilogy. Or, devourers of filth born from injustice. Or, ecstatics on the edge of the abyss. Or, bristled their contours with knives
Naomi Rincón-Gallardo
11 This we can do, this is not impossible
Beatriz Lemos and Denise Ferreira da Silva in conversation
12 Poetics of decolonial ecologies in theory and practice
María Iñigo Clavo and Beatriz Lemos in conversation with Maria Thereza Alves and Malcom Ferdinand

Part IV: Temporality as plural possibility

13 Lightning flashes of future
Andrei Fernández
14 Futures uninscribed: contemporary Indigenous artistic practice
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn
15 ‘Welcome to the future’. Spatio-temporal reconfiguration on stage and the (im)possible prefiguration of the anticolonial
Claudio Alvarado Lincopi, Olivia Casagrande and Roberto Cayuqueo Martínez
16 Across cultures, knowledge and disciplines: talking about collaborations
Giuliana Borea, Venuca Evanán, Gabriela Germaná, and Rember Yahuarcani
17 Ibirapema cosmotechnics
Fernanda Pitta, Glicéria de Jesus Silva, Mariana Françozo, Renata Valente, Brigitte Thierion and Pascale De Robert

Glossary
List of Latin American Institutions
Index