Unmaking to Make

Overview & Synopsis

The call to decolonise has become one of the dominant forces in contemporary art – yet its most radical possibilities are routinely absorbed and neutralised by the institutions of the Global North. Unmaking to Make intervenes in this impasse by turning to Latin America, centring Afro-diasporic and Indigenous perspectives from a region where artistic practice operates at the intersection of aesthetics, politics and social life, and whose thinkers and practitioners have long theorised decolonisation from within. Drawing on essays, curatorial reflections and conversations with contributors from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Martinique, Mexico and Peru, the volume moves across four thematic terrains – counter-genealogies, museums and cultural institutions, the decolonisation of language, and plural temporalities – to show how art unsettles colonial narratives, reshapes knowledge and generates new vocabularies of power. At its core, the volume makes a bold claim: that Latin American artistic practice is not just transforming the canon but articulating a form of thought – one that theorises, enacts and insists upon other worlds. Essential reading for scholars, curators, artists and students of contemporary art, decolonial thought and Latin American cultural politics.