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The panel invites investigations of moments when ancient American artists reflected on their own processes of artistic creation or on the nature of the objects they made. Such reflexive and self-referential expressions are visible in images of artists at work, representations of works of art, and works that draw attention to the conditions of their own making, dedication, or viewing. For example, Mary Frame has shown that the imagery woven into Andean textiles frequently derives from or emulates the underlying structures of the cloth, thereby reinforcing the primacy of its material properties and the conditions of its production. And David Stuart has demonstrated that a majority of Classic Maya inscriptions relate directly to the dedication or ownership of the monuments or objects on which they appear, thus marking them as participants within the social landscape. Because they point to the substance, specificity, and social being of the objects and spaces they embellish, the analysis of such self-referential invocations holds great potential as an aid for understanding the ways local ontologies and worldviews were materialized. We seek papers that address how specific instances of art or architecture from any part of the Pre-Columbian Americas drew attention to aspects of their own presentation, including, but not limited to, their materiality, production processes, placement, contexts of use, or conditions of viewership. Explorations of less obvious examples of self-referentiality are especially welcome, as are papers that engage with this topic through the lens of indigenous concepts and cosmologies.