🌎 ESPAÑOL // ENGLISH
Notes on Anarcheology: forgery, iconoclasm, displacement (2022)
Artists:
Circe Irasema, Carlos Martinez, Ileana Moreno, Claudia Peña Salinas.
Notes on Anarchaeology engages critically with how Western archaeological and ethnographic traditions have grappled with Mesoamerican material culture. The exhibition introduces four projects by contemporary Mexican artists as acts of anarchic archaeology. As described in the Black Trowel Collective Manifesto, Anarchaeology “incorporates tenets of a decolonized, indigenous, and feminist archaeology, contesting hegemonic narratives of the past.”
Within critical heritage studies, the concepts of forgery, iconoclasm, and displacement carry profound and complex implications. These notions unveil the intricate path of colonial and imperial violence, a legacy perpetuated and manifested across museum collections worldwide. The artists in this exhibition redefine these concepts as experimental strategies –as means to resist and counter established norms governing collection, conservation, interpretation, and exhibition practices. Creating archival records that connect looting and tourism as extractive actions, validating "counterfeit" artifacts and their makers, and reinterpreting ancient myths through a feminist lens, these projects formulate alternative approaches to engaging with the past and envisioning the future.