News

Learn about the celebration of the cultural heritage of the Indigenous Chontal people, both at the British Museum and in their community of San Pedro Huamelula on the Mexican Pacific coast.

On 12 October, Peruvian artist Nereida Apaza Mamani London-based dance group Baila Peru UK, and collaborating artists participated in a whole-day event celebrating Indigenous heritage and resistance.

Artist Denilson Baniwa and anthropologist Fran Baniwa were invited to share their experiences in working with museums in Brazil and around the world. Learn more about their cocuration and participatory documentation in Amazonian Collections at the British Museum.

Species of the River is the result of a collaborative research project with Yaqui architect Selina Martinez which examines questions about territorial identity, dispossession, community memory and storytelling. Join us on this journey throughout the Yaqui River to learn about the connections between culture and design in the Yaqui communities on both sides of the present-day US/Mexico border.

Join SDCELAR curators on a road trip across the US-Mexico border following the trail of some fascinating and impactful heritage projects with Hispanic/Latinx communities. Listen to the new season of ‘Made in Latin America’.

Roseane Cadete Wapichana is an Indigenous historian of the Wapichana people from Roraima, Brazil. Read here the speech she gave in the event ‘Strengthening Threads’ at the British Museum.’

Hay Cartagena 2024 (25-28 January) will feature three events where the authors will share their experiences working alongside SDCELAR curators to create their stories inspired by these archives called ‘Ethnographic Documents’. The talks will be in person in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) and will have simultaneous interpretation in English and Spanish.

You can now watch out our talk about Latin America and the Caribbean, in which SDCELAR members and collaborators speak about collection projects with living communities in the region.

Join Selina Martínez, Gustavo Caboco and SDCELAR curators to learn more about our collaborative projects on Thursday 12th October at 6.30 PM (BST).

What is the significance of ancient Mixtec codices for the living communities in Mexico? How can we promote a decolonial approach to understanding these manuscripts?

This talk presents the scope of this theoretical-methodological position and the relationship between the codices and the living heritage of Indigenous communities, particularly the Tonindeye Codex, currently kept in the British Museum, and the Mixtec Ñuu Savi (People of the Rain).

What are European museums with ethnographic collections doing to weave and strengthen threads with communities in Latin America and the Caribbean? Thinking with histories and practices of the Wapichana and their objects held at the British Museum, this event will reflect on the conditions that have created dislocation and disconnection between museums and communities.

The exhibition aims to showcase the perspectives of people living in this region of South America with one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.

The Enlhet are an indigenous community in Paraguay that has been affected by the ongoing colonisation in the Chaco territory. Hannes Kalisch works together with the community to collect the memory of the elderly while promoting the importance of the Enlhet language.

The following video shows how Afro-Bolivian artist Sharon Pérez developed her artist residency with SDCELAR, from las Yungas in Bolivia to the final performance at the British Museum.

This Paraguayan collective is part of the collaborative project ‘Collection, Mission, Colonisation: Encounters and Entangled Histories from the Chaco‘ carried out with SDCELAR.

‘Untold Microcosms’ gathers 10 Latin American authors to imagine stories based on objects from the British Museum collection. Find out what objects they chose and read excerpts from the recently published texts.

Ten Latin American authors worked with SDCELAR curators to write stories inspired by items in the British Museum collection in a collaborative project with Hay Festival International.

Rocío Vera-Flores, PhD candidate at the Leiden University, visited London and describes her experience with the Tepetlaoztoc Codex.

Look at these contemporary codices mentioned in our podcast ‘Made in Latin America’, episode 7.

Many of the current Latin American carnivals “commemorate local historical narratives about Indigenous, Spanish, African and other ethnic identities, but at the same time they create a space to raise issues that have an impact on race relations and cultural expression in the present”.

Edited by Laura Osorio Sunnucks and Jago Cooper, ‘Mapping a New Museum’ showcases projects in Latin America supported by SDCELAR and seeks to rethink the museum’s role in today’s politically conscious world.

‘Saa Ñu’ú’ (Clay Birds) is the artwork conceived by Martínez Valderrama and it combines sounds from the landscape, ancestral instruments and images of the Mesoamerican territory to create a ‘soundscape’ composition of the region through his experimental art practice.

Created by SDCELAR and its collaborators, ‘Made in Latin America’ hosts stories and new interpretations of remarkable collections from the British Museum. ​

Miriam Rudolph is part of the collaborative project ‘Collection, Mission, Colonisation: Encounters and Entangled Histories from the Chaco‘ carried out with SDCELAR. 

On Tuesday, May 17th, Afro-Bolivian artist Sharon Pérez performed ‘The mask is looking at us’ in the Great Court at the British Museum. Watch here an extract and her explanation about the artistic exercise.

The photography competition “Nature, society and climate” aims to visibilise the climate emergency through photographic art.

Nereida Apaza Mamani is a poet and visual artist who has lived between the cities of Arequipa and Puno, in Peru. This artistic book called ‘La Diablada’ (2019) is inspired by Apaza’s experience of taking part in the La fiesta de la Virgen de la Candelaria.

Osvaldo Pitoe, Jorge Carema, Efacio Álvarez, Marcos Ortiz and Esteban Klassen, from an Indigenous artist collective in the Chaco, along with Miriam Rudolph and Lanto’oy’ Unruh, will present a series of works that are an outcome of a project with SDCELAR for the first time.

Osvaldo Pitoe, Jorge Carema, Efacio Álvarez, Marcos Ortiz and Esteban Klassen, a collective of indigenous artists from the Chaco, are part of the project ‘Collection, Mission, Colonisation: Encounters and entangled Histories from the Chaco’.

Lanto’oy’ Unruh is an artist from the Enlhet Ya’alve-Saanga community, in the Paraguayan Chaco and is part of the Paraguayan project ‘Collection, mission, colonization: encounters and intertwined stories from the Chaco’.

In January 2022 at the International Hay Festival held in Cartagena, Colombia, the museologists Nicola Levell, Cristina Lleras, Anthony Shelton and Laura Osorio Sunnucks discussed the relationship between literature and anthropology.

Miriam Rudolph is part of the Paraguayan project ‘Collection, Mission, Colonisation: Encounters and Entangled Histories from the Chaco’. Here you can read her statement and explore part of her process.

Shelved among the collections in storage at the British Museum are around six hundred items from the Chaco in Paraguay, South America. This region, although undergoing rapid deforestation, is not very well known internationally.