Shores of the World - Pamela Cevallos talk and round table

La Pila is a community located in the coast of Ecuador that has developed economic practices articulated through archaeological objects such as huaqueria and the production of crafts that emulate a "pre-Columbian" aesthetic. Since 2015 Pamela Cevallos has worked with this community as an artist and ethnographer focusing on practices of constructing value. In her talk she will analyze how contemporary art production methods such as appropriation and copying generate possibilities for field work and ethnographic knowledge; and, how the use of museographic strategies and the museal experience in different institutional spaces of legitimation allows displacing the interest for the objects towards the networks that mobilize them. Pamela Cevallos lives and works in Quito, Ecuador. She is an artist and anthropologist that links art practice with ethnographic and academical research. Her work explores the social life of things, the practices of collecting and exhibition, and the uses of the archive. Since 2013 she has developed projects related to the history of national museums and the origin of cultural objects. She has research around the community of La Pila in Ecuador about the tensions between the looting of archeology, the concept of heritage and the local appropriations of the artisans that create replicas for tourists. She has also research about the history of modern and contemporary Ecuadorian art. She published the book La intransigencia de los objetos (2013) that explores the art market in Quito during the sixties and seventies decades. She has investigated about the art field in Ecuador during the nineties decade and curated the anthological exhibition of the conceptual artist Pablo Barriga. Cevallos is part of the interdisciplinary collective la-scolaris that research about museums, archives, and art. Currently she is a professor and researcher of the School of Visual Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. http://www.la-scolaris.org/