TAKING BACK THE MUSEUM – Opening the Space of Community Museums to Recover the Art of Indigenous People

Introduction

It is important to support the art and museal practice of Indigenous people in the places where they live and in that way strenghten their community-based knowledge, autonomy and self-esteem. The colonial practice of early researchers was to take Indigenous art objects to Western museums. This project aims to turn this pattern upside down, to decolonize art and museology in order to to recover the art and knowledge of Indigenous communities.

The research team will arrange an art workshop for Indigenous youth every year in a different community museum and country (Norway, México, New Zealand, Finland). Local Indigenous artists speaking the language of the participants will be invited as workshop leaders, and artists from other countries will be invited as visiting specialists. A documentary film filmed with Indigenous youth will be produced. Research articles will be written in collaboration with Indigenous knowledge holders, and translations will be made available in Indigenous languages.

The project asks how can Indigenous conceptions of art, knowledge and “formations of being-knowing-doing” (Escobar 2018) challenge the mainstream ways of museal art presentation and be presented and performed in a responsible way by participatory community-based art in community museums.