Early monumental architecture in the Central Andes (1400-500 BCE) was striking: large and decorated with impactful images evoking aggression and predation. In this article, I argue that the design and decoration of monumental buildings in ancient coastal Peru may have been seen as acts of creating and activating powerful non-human entities. These animate buildings were designed to become predators that fed on humans during rituals. In the highlands, the artistic effort focused on the creation of stone entities, and ceremonial centers were their home. The religious traditions behind these creative practices disintegrated around 500 BCE, but the legacy of these understandings of ritual space and animacy lasted centuries, influencing aspects of ancestor veneration in later Andean history.
Scholars have long been fascinated by the footprints that appear throughout the corpus of Mesoamerican art. They are painted in manuscripts, murals, and caves; modeled from clay and carved into stone; and built into the visual and grammatical structures of Mesoamerica's hieroglyphic scripts. Over the course of three millennia, Mesoamerican footprints captured the movements, paths, traces, and presences of people, animals, and gods. They also engaged with ideas of representation, place, temporalities, phenomenology, and semiotics. The footprints we address are not indexical, the result from the weight of a physicalized body. Instead, they are the result of a deliberate act in which the outline of a foot was carefully (re)produced, which transports them into a different interpretive realm from an observed imprint. Footprints and pawprints in Mesoamerican art shed insight into Indigenous understandings of the relationship between bodies, places, time, and the larger social, natural, and supernatural worlds, communicated in a visually succinct manner.
What is the temporal, material, and representational status of what (selectively) reaches us from deep antiquity? In this paper, I explore the deep temporality of the altered rock, i.e. rock-carved images and inscriptions as durable and stubborn remains of the past, hailing for us from the temporal depths of history and the weathered surfaces of geology. Rather than accepting their durability as an accident of history, I invite readers to consider the politics of carving the rock as a site-specific and future-oriented, gesture, a creative one, with a sense of reaching posterity and a desire to claim legacy. Thinking through the perspective of the futurity of archaeological things and applying them to rock-cut images and inscriptions, I consider, in this essay, how one would make sense of an image or inscription carved on the surface of a living rock. Thinking beyond the visual content of the image and/or the inscription (which is often the case with art historical and philological studies of rock monuments without sufficient consideration of their landscape context), I ask a question more in tune with the archaeological imagination of these monuments: how does one articulate the creative and materially enduring, tectonic act of embedding an image onto a geological surface? And how is this site-specific act made meaningful within the very particular yet long-term history and politics of the local ecology or landscape? Here, I interrogate the rock-carved monuments through three aspects of engaging with the geology of the place: temporality, materiality, and coloniality. I argue that these three aspects of monument-making are fundamental to understanding the nature of this gesture of carving. Finally, I will turn to a few examples of architectural interventions in Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia where a special mimetic engagement with the mineral world is well documented.
In this article, I analyze ancestral Anishinaabeg rock paintings of the Canadian Shield. I challenge traditional iconographic and iconological priorities focused on deciphering static meanings, instead proposing a framework centered on the relational and ontological dimensions of the artworks. Drawing on Indigenous metaphysics and the iconic turn, my study examines how contemporary Anishinaabeg communities interpret the paintings. I approximate an Anishinaabeg iconology that is grounded in epistemic commitments to dream work, slipstreaming, and narrative ekphrasis. This methodology directly critiques the 'authoritative gaze' of settler-colonial art history (Skinner 2014) and advocates for an iconological sovereignty that aligns with Anishinaabeg temporalities and ontologies. Ultimately, by decentering settler-state narratives, this article reveals the rock paintings as active participants in ongoing Anishinaabeg lifeways, fulfilling crucial metaphysical and political roles. This work reframes the past not as a fixed archive, but as a dynamic source of new understandings in the present and inspiration for the future.
The ancient Olmec city of La Venta was a colorful place. Archaeologists repeatedly remarked on the vividness of the colors that they encountered during excavations, yet contemporary photographic technology was often insufficient to capture the richness of color that they saw. This essay considers three key aspects of the materiality of color at La Venta: the selection of intrinsically colored materials from near and distant sources, juxtapositions of color that yielded symbolic and optical effects, and the ways that color changed with changes in the environment. The result, I will argue, is that color was understood to be both material and mutable, often in symbolically productive ways. Moreover, the creation of color at La Venta brought different places into relation at the same time as it marked the civic center as an extraordinary place.
Rock art is a vital form of cultural heritage and traditional knowledge for Indigenous peoples. These images are deeply connected to specific places, making it essential to consider the environmental, temporal, and spatial contexts in which they exist to fully understand their meanings. Conditions such as the viewer's gender, spiritual role, temporality, and seasonality can all influence how such images are perceived. Acknowledging the presence or absence of rock art within an Indigenous cultural and ontological context enhances our understanding of how rock art can be approached, viewed, and interacted with. This study explores how and why particular conditions shape our ability to 'see' or 'not see' rock art, recognizing the agency of the images themselves - how they can choose to reveal or conceal their presence to researchers and communities, contending that rock art must be considered a social agent.
Mosaic floors from the House of Cilicia at Seleucia Pieria, a port near Antioch-on-the-Orontes, depict topographical personifications of the territory of Cilicia framed by those of the rivers Tigris and Pyramus, among other personifications that are now damaged. Fitted together from colorful cut stones, these figural assemblages draw together place-based materials and the personhood of topographical elements. Drawing on legacy data from mosaics excavated in the 1930s and dispersed to institutions across North America, this essay argues that the afterlives of these mosaics remap the environments that they personify in modernity and, thus, craft hyperreal networks of relation to enact forms of distributed personhood.
This special issue of World Art encourages greater archaeological reflection on the relationships between art and place. Do artworks - often made 'of' a place, not just in it - throw into relief certain qualities and experiences concretely associated with a place? Conversely, can it be said that artworks create their own places, serving as portals that transform the here-and-now, transcending the dimensionality of their media? The issue contributors address relationships between art and the topographical or ecological plane (art as rooted in place); how art and place gather and conflate disparate temporalities and materialities; and artworks that evoke and articulate with created, untethered spaces beyond the phenomenal world. We discuss what we call the phenomenal artiplace, examining the tight relationship between place and the materials specific to it, as well as the claim that all constituents of a place are animate, including art that emerges in it. We also touch briefly on the possibilities of a 'hyperreal' approach to art and place. The theme of the coloniality of artiplaces and its effects on temporality concludes the introduction. Our essay also articulates the relevance of the contributions, given its wide range of geographical areas, time periods, and materials.
The challenges of dealing with the Anthropocene are not only environmental but also representational. They concern the lack of human mutuality with other-type ontologies, the extraordinary temporalities and scales of geological phenomena, and the socio-political power structures limiting access to and participation in climate debate and action, among others. This article focuses on artistic revaluations of material objects such as dead animals, rocks, and caves in recent Indonesian art projects and events as ways to connect with, critically analyse, and give meaning and value to nature and planet Earth. Based on the analysis of publicly available catalogues, photographs, videos and other documents of the projects and events, I argue that these explorations also put the Indonesian art world and its history into new, critical perspectives. They demonstrate how human engagement with the natural environment is closely related to moments of renewal in Indonesian art. They have been an integral part of movements towards decentring the activity and interest in Indonesian contemporary art from Java to other parts of the archipelago, such as Makassar in South Sulawesi.
Early narratives on Makonde blackwood sculpture were generally uninformed and led to the output of this multifaceted eastern African creative movement being relegated to categories such as 'tourist souvenirs' or 'airport art' and disregarded by western art institutions. In order to counter the persistent legacy of those commentaries, this article outlines a historically informed narrative for the development of the Makonde blackwood sculpting movement, which gives necessary attention to Makonde experiences of colonial violence on the Mueda Plateau in northern Mozambique, migration to Tanzania, and the challenges of postcolonial urban life. By foregrounding migration as the formative experience for the first generation of migrant Muedan Makonde blackwood sculptors in Tanzania, the article offers a revised 'modernist' perspective on the development of the 'shetani' genre of Makonde blackwood sculpture and the creative efflorescence that followed its introduction in postcolonial Dar es Salaam.
The Surrealist movement, for which Australian artist Howard Arkley expressed youthful enthusiasm, is discussed as crucial to various aspects of his mature art and thought. Particular emphasis is given to his taste for doodling, both as a casual practice akin to Surrealist 'automatic drawing', and as the source of many of his most characteristic figurative works, especially Primitive (1981) and his 1980s images of cacti and other hybrid forms. Surrealist principles are also proposed as central to the suburban imagery for which Arkley is best known, in relation both to his darker, 'uncanny' house canvases of the 1980s, and also to the transformative approach he took to suburbia in his 1990s canvases and installations, interpreted here as instances of Breton's influential idea of the Marvellous. Various Australian artists and works reflecting the impact of Surrealism are also considered in the course of the analysis, and Arkley is identified as a notable contributor to the Australian variant of the movement.
Aventurine glass is a compelling material for tracing connections among makers, spaces, agents, traders, diplomatic circuits, and the desire for inventive things. First cited as 'venturina' in 1626, aventurine glass was crafted by artisans working on the island of Murano. Its distinctive properties - that it glistens in response to the viewer's movements - made it a prized material for export. In 1700, Jesuit missionaries presented aventurine objects as diplomatic gifts to the Chinese Qing Imperial Court. The Imperial Glass Manufactory successfully emulated the lustrous material in 1741. Following this breakthrough, the Qianlong Emperor issued numerous imperial orders directing Zaobanchu artisans to craft zoological and auspicious objects from the glass. This article addresses the global movement of materials, technologies, and objects, and their active uptake and also the resistance of some cultural forms to easy translation. The case of aventurine attests to how some materials demonstrate a divide in which cultural differences formed artistic processes, experimentations, and ideas. The production and export of Venetian glass to China, coupled with the dissemination of technological knowledge and experimentation with local resources and subjects, offer insights into the potency of new materials and creative thinking in the early modern world.
The cave art and mobiliary art of the Upper Palaeolithic has drawn great attention from archaeologists, art historians, artists and philosophers over the years. But what do we know of the art traditions of the remainder of the European Stone Age: the Mesolithic and Neolithic? I argue that while the art traditions of the Upper Palaeolithic are beguiling for their strong representational imagery, the art traditions of later periods, though less rooted in traditions of representation, are no less intriguing for the issues they raise regarding the temporality of images. This study aims to introduce the art traditions of the North European Stone Age to a wider audience and to consider the implications of their study for archaeologists, art historians, artists and philosophers.
This article considers the minimalist practice of artists Aaron Curme and Sungi Mlengeya to examine how similar economies of means create opposed spatial ethics. Through close looking, the analysis shows Curme bending reduction toward obstruction, treating whiteness as barricade and partition, while Mlengeya mobilises it for liberation, blank ground as breathable commons for Black women's presence. Rather than a static interpretation, this study argues that African minimalism is a spectrum of situated tactics where absence acts as agentive expression. The article contributes language for labels and display, clarifies how reception shapes perception of 'emptiness,' and offers a transferrable framework for pairing abstraction with figuration in Africa-based case studies.
This article examines quilombola ancestrality through artistic production using natural pigments collected in traditional territories in Paran & aacute;, Brazil. Based on an artistic research methodology, soils of different tonalities were gathered in the quilombola communities of Rio Verde (Guaraque & ccedil;aba), Restinga and Vila Esperan & ccedil;a (Lapa), prepared with traditional tempera techniques, and applied while preserving their original granulation. The process emphasized community participation, attunement to local rhythms, and the symbolic meanings embedded in the land. Three works were produced, forming an ancestral triptych that portrays figures of different generations (a matriarch, a child, and a guardian) as emblems of continuity, memory, and care. Drawing on community voices, the analysis shows that soil as pigment transcends aesthetics, functioning as a living language that materializes historical memory and territorial belonging. The study concludes that artistic practices can contribute to reactivating bonds between body, land, and history, reinforcing ancestrality as both a social value and a practice of resistance.
Psychoanalysis and the utilisation of biomorphic images continue to play a crucial role in the interpretation and analysis of visual representations by contemporary artists. The subject matter from psycho-iconography unifies the aesthetic object with its cultural traditions. The study, based on a qualitative approach, explored Portia Zvavahera's religious and spiritual iconography inspired by dreams and hallucinations. Our analysis uses interview and iconographic data concerning artworks by this renowned contemporary female artist. We argue that dreamlike symbolic representations could be deciphered to unlock new meanings and narratives. Also, our findings show that symbolic representations were inspired by dreams intertwined with hallucinations. The artist used printmaking and painting as techniques for transferring dreams onto canvas, and also visual metaphors manifested through religious tapestry. Psycho-iconography in visual art artists can be further explored to gain insight into their metaphoric artworks.
This article explores the curatorial process of conceiving and developing archaeological exhibitions in museums, focusing on how objects can be used in narratives to complement formal learning environments and enhance visitors connections to their past. It approaches the subject by analysing a series of Pre-Columbian exhibitions carried out across a decade at the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), one of Peru's leading arts and cultural institutions. Despite its vast cultural heritage, Peru has been marked by a significant gap between archaeology and education and a minimal history of exhibitions dedicated to the critical interpretation and display of this past. This study explores the integration of museum strategies for creating engaging experiences with archaeological topics, while drawing on academic scholarship to explore underlying aspects of curatorial work in museums related to the objects' histories, taking into account the particularities of the worlds to which they belong.
This article examines the process of consolidating the recognition of the sculptor Juan Mu & ntilde;oz (Madrid, 1953) within the contemporary art canon. Drawing on key contributions from literary theory and the sociology of art, the analysis focuses on the last decades of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first, and situates Mu & ntilde;oz's inclusion within a specific historical and cultural framework shaped by the complexities of the artistic field. The article begins by introducing key concepts regarding the dynamics of artistic canons and the principles that regulate their evolution. It then examines Mu & ntilde;oz's artistic oeuvre in relation to key indicators of canonicity, such as the national-universal axis, his aesthetic innovation and his engagement with tradition. The following section, structured around the artist's chronology, examines additional factors, including the accumulation of cultural and social capital and its strategic deployment within the artistic field. Finally, the article assesses the trajectory of Mu & ntilde;oz's recognition following his premature death in 2001, as well as the current state of his artistic legacy.
Studies on Asian diasporic subjectivities have largely been concentrated in the Northern hemisphere focusing on transpacific horizontal movement on the East-West axis. The study of longitudinal movement and global connections in contemporary art troubles and extends upon existing studies on and of transpacific art, turning away from Euro-American centricity. This article contributes to growing research on the Contemporary Art of Migration by focussing on the act of 'moving Southwards' on a North-South axis through the analysis of Haji Oh's artwork Seabird Habitats (2022). Oh is a third-generation Zainichi Korean artist born and raised in Japan, now practising in Australia using traditional textile techniques from Korea, Japan, Guatemala and Indonesia. Her transnational approach to her textile work demonstrates an existence and practice beyond the binaries of Asia/Australia, North/South, and East/West. Her movements across the Pacific Ocean have engendered a perspective that encompasses multiple sites and locations, expanding the conventionally limited gamut associated with such binary terms as 'Korean-Australian' or 'Japanese-Korean'. Her practice considers histories of partition, division, and precarity in a specific time of Cold War politics in the Pacific region as she triangulates Japan, Australia, and Korea, characterising the Pacific region as a zone of ongoing exchange, interchange and transit. This article, then, argues for expanded frameworks of interpreting diasporic artists, in particular through an understanding of the transpacific.
