“Artistic Resonances in Latin America and the Caribbean: Politics, Identities, and Practices in the Arts from the Pre-Colonial to the Contemporary”
We are pleased to circulate the Call for Papers for the panel “Artistic Resonances in Latin America and the Caribbean: Politics, Identities, and Practices in the Arts from the Pre-Colonial to the Contemporary,” proposed for the 59th International Congress of Americanists (ICA 2027), to be held from July 5–9, 2027, at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), Medellín, Colombia.
For further information and submission procedures, please visit the official ICA website:
Call for Papers
Deadline: January 10, 2027
This panel proposes a broad discussion of the arts in Latin America and the Caribbean, moving beyond approaches focused exclusively on decolonization to encompass artistic production ranging from the pre-colonial period and the eras of Portuguese and Spanish colonial rule to contemporary practices in the twenty-first century.
Preference will be given to approaches that engage with issues of memory, history, and orality, while remaining attentive to the cultural, political, and aesthetic specificities of different Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as their transnational convergences, tensions, and exchanges.
We also encourage submissions that critically engage with artistic practices beyond Latin America and the Caribbean, provided that they address themes relevant to Latin American and Caribbean contexts. Transnational, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspectives are particularly welcome.
Drawing on the thought of Édouard Glissant, the arts are understood as fields of resonance capable of fostering relationships between territories, temporalities, epistemologies, and modes of existence. From this perspective, the panel brings together research that critically examines art and identity in Latin America and the Caribbean through local, global, and glocal perspectives.
We welcome research spanning different temporalities, languages, and artistic media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, film, video art, performance, installation, sound and digital art, as well as other forms of traditional or experimental visual culture.
We are particularly interested in approaches addressing the art of Indigenous peoples, Mannerism, Baroque and nineteenth-century academic production, modernisms, muralism, Indigenism, Concrete and Neo-Concrete art, experimental practices, and contemporary developments in the visual arts of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The panel also welcomes discussions of curatorial practices, art criticism, cultural heritage, the development of collections and archives, private and public collecting, exhibitions, and the circulation of Latin American and Caribbean art both within and beyond its original production circuits.
This panel seeks to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue and critical reflection on the diverse forms of production, circulation, and reception of Latin American and Caribbean arts, while considering their historical, political, media, and epistemological complexities in contemporary contexts.
We therefore invite submissions in the form of academic papers, artistic practices, art and art-activism proposals, curatorial accounts, research-in-progress, and experimental writing.
Suggested Topics
Contributions addressing the following themes, among others, are especially welcome:
Art and politics
Art and authoritarian regimes
Art, memory, and orality
Epistemologies in art research
Indigenous peoples, ancestry, and artistic practices
Coloniality, decoloniality, and post-colonialism
Relationships between tradition and innovation in art
Latin American modernisms, avant-gardes, and experimentalisms
Different media, materialities, and technologies in the arts
Art, experimentation, and hybrid processes in contemporary art
Cinema, video, photography, and visual cultures
Performance, Body Art, and relational practices
Feminisms, gender, sexuality, intersectionality, and dissidence in the arts
Diasporas, migrations, territories, and transnational identities
Latin American artists in the United States
Latin American artistic production in global contexts
Archives, collections, and cultural heritage
Biennials, exhibitions, and the international circulation of Latin American art
Alternative art exhibition circuits
Relationships between art, territory, and cosmopolitics
Contemporary art, ecology, and sustainability
Art and Human Rights
Languages: English, Portuguese, and Spanish
For further information and details on the submission process, please visit the official ICA website and consult the full Call for Papers (CFP):
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