¿Cómo se dice «Settler Colonialism»?: Connecting Decolonial Art Histories in Latin America and Canada

Students of the history of art in Canadian universities are likely familiar with Indigenous and decolonial theories and methodologies for art history in North America, topics and approaches that have rightfully garnered well-deserved and overdue attention in academia. However, given Latin America’s colonial legacy, its history of interventionist policies by Western nations, the ongoing oppression at the hands of the United States, the continued discrimination and marginalization of Latinxs in the diaspora, and the growing presence of Latinx and Latinx-Canadian artists and art historians in Canada, it is surprising that post- and de-colonial critique in the Canadian context has not developed more sustained engagements with the artistic and intellectual production of Latin America. Acknowledging the differences and the specifics of the Canadian and Latin American contexts, this paper seeks to begin bridging the above-mentioned gap by examining sites of intersection and cross-pollination between both intellectual and artistic currents. This is, in other words, a tentative articulation of a Latinx-Canadian Settler art history that stands in dialogue with ongoing discourses on the decolonization of the field and with the global turn in art history. How can Indigenous and decolonial theory from Canada help advance scholarship on Latin American art? How does art and scholarship from Latin America help further the work of decolonization? What happens when we put together Christi Belcourt’s Walking With Our Sisters and Teresa Margolles’ Tela Bordada and Pesquisas? Or when Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto antropófago is read alongside Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus?