The Art of Recalling the Past: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Artistic Revivals in the Ancient Americas

Although widely explored in the context of European and Euro-American cultures, few have investigated the rich evidence of artistic revival in the ancient Americas. This presentation will outline different case-studies of revivals across the ancient Americas, specifically in the context of the Mexica (Aztec), Maya, Moche, and Ica societies. The artistic revivals discussed in this work include the media of freestanding sculpture, painted ceramic, murals, and bas-relief frieze. Spanning across time and space in Latin America, these case-studies will demonstrate that the analysis of artistic revivals in the ancient Americas must be based on Indigenous ontologies and different cultural notions of time, which are often non-linear. For example, the study of revivals in Mesoamerica link revivalism to specific cyclical worldviews related to cosmic beginnings. In the case of the Andean region, I will argue that revivals materialize circulatory views of time and space whereby calling on the past can result in the realization of a desired future. The case-studies presented will compare how peoples of the ancient Americas viewed and interacted with their own (or other) ancestral art through the study of artistic revival as well as the topics of “antique” collecting, spolia, and heirlooms. The topic of how Indigenous peoples of the past perceived and interacted with ancestral art is an underdeveloped area of research in the Latin American region. As such, this work will yield valuable insights into the dynamics of artistic revivals, social memory, and Indigenous ontologies in the ancient Americas.