Conversation with Elvira Espejo Ayca and Yásnaya Elena A. Gil

The Arts beyond Beauty

Yásnaya Elena A. Gil invites Elvira Espejo Ayca, an artist and the current director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore of Bolivia, to reflect on the political and colonial implications of concepts such as beauty, art, and crafts.

The artistic creation and collective aesthetic expressions of Indigenous peoples have been subject to violence resulting from the racism suffered by Indigenous creators. At the same time, the capitalist market attempts to appropriate these manifestations, and nation-states seize hold of them as elements for integrating identity narratives. Art, mutual nurturing, beauty, craftsmanship, or cultural misappropriation: what tensions and differences exist between these categories? What possibilities can the perspectives of Andean and Mesoamerican peoples offer us?

In this session, the linguist, writer, and researcher Yásnaya Elena A. Gil invites Elvira Espejo Ayca, an artist, researcher and the current director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore of Bolivia, to discuss the phenomena associated with these tensions and to propose alternative categories by drawing on the perspectives of Andean and Mesoamerican peoples.