Decolonialidade e gestão da alteridade: a prática da curadoria compartilhada entre povos indígenas e instituições culturais no Brasil

Abstract

In Brazil, from the 1970s onwards, post-colonial studies began to reverberate an interest about the colonized peoples history and the academic space began to develop researches in which the aesthetic dimension of the material culture of indigenous peoples was widely analyzed and, consequently, the discussions about ways of approaching this materiality by cultural institutions. Since that, the dominant discourse has been revisited by the academy and also questioned through the articulation of indigenous, who claim their right to memory and also to a full contemporary existence. As they participated in the construction of this dominant narrative, cultural institutions have been assuming their role in what can be called a decolonial task. Considering James Clifford’s (1988) writings, which emphasizes that “the very status of museums as historical-cultural theaters of memory” came to be questioned, in other words, “Whose memory? For what purposes?”, that gets an idea of how deep are the provocations launched at the institutions. And, in this sense, negotiation fields and dialogue between research, institutions and indigenous interlocutors develop and, in turn, produce new otherness management modalities. Among these new modalities, this research analyzes shared curating, namely, this encounter between colonizers and colonized who negotiate terms and share authority to, finally, occupy the institutional space. And, for this purpose, the exhibitions “Dja Guata Porã: Rio de Janeiro Indígena”, held by Rio de Janeiro Art Museum between May 2017 and March 2018, and “Véxoa: Nós sabemos”, held by Pinacoteca de São Paulo between November 2020 and March 2021, are some case studies. This analysis considers the possibilities and advances that unfold from the shared curatorship, as well as the controversies and challenges that arise throughout this process