International Indigenous Arts Today: Engaging Parallel Worlds - Lecture with Dr. Mario Caro

During the last two decades, Indigenous artists have been gaining much representation at international art venues, including documenta, the Biennial of Sydney, the Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. However, since 1995, the International Indigenous Arts Gatherings have been providing an international arts scene that is exclusively Indigenous. This lecture will analyze the dynamics of these different circuits in order to consider their role in developing the future of contemporary Indigenous arts.

Dr. Mario Caro is a researcher, curator, and instructor of contemporary Indigenous art. He is an instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Curator at the Evergreen Gallery at Evergreen State College.

This lecture is part of a speaker series titled Indigenous Curation: Asserting Our Narrative, organized by the UW iSchool in collaboration with the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Museology, Canadian Studies; the Bill Holm Center; and the Henry Art Gallery.

The Indigenous Curation speaker series will bring three dynamic Indigenous curators to the University of Washington. These scholars work in museum, gallery, community, and academic spaces to assert a distinctly Native narrative that acknowledges the spiritual, linguistic, social, and economic role of Native arts. The interventions made by these individuals in the museum and arts fields are actively challenging the status quo of exhibition practice that has routinely silenced Native voices. Instead they are generating and communicating new knowledge sets, based on Indigenous ways of knowing and international collaborations. Their discussions will serve as catalysts for more in-depth discussion of issues that will include UW students, faculty and staff, and the Puget Sound Native arts community.

For more information on this series, contact Miranda Belarde-Lewis at mhbl@uw.edu.