Sebastián Eduardo Dávila – Syncretism and Contemporary Art from the Americas

Sebastián Eduardo Dávila’s postdoctoral research project connects the concept of syncretism to contemporary art production and artists from the Americas. What understanding of syncretism needs to be crafted in order to do justice to the entangled histories, as well as to the spirit and intention embedded in art practices where Indigenous and Afro-Diasporic saberes (“wisdom, knowledges”) are transmitted under dominant idioms, like contemporary art formats and further conventions in biennials, art fairs, and museums? The project follows the intuition that in various art contexts, a syncretic operation is at stake that contradicts understandings of syncretism as fusion or synthesis, instead inscribing loss, as well as transmission through hidden gestures. These gestures are invisible, but they might become perceivable, for instance when performed in the context of exhibitions and—oftentimes experimental—rituals. This modality of syncretism opens the possibility to mourn the loss of saberes throughout histories of colonial and national-state impositions, dispossessions and appropriations, and it cannot be systematized, but needs to be activated and experienced. The non-systematic quality of syncretism asks for a focus on specific contexts—sites, actors and practices across the Americas. The project connects these insights with concepts of syncretism in anthropology of religion and theology, diaspora studies, and linguistics.

Sebastián Eduardo Dávila studied art history and film studies in Jena, Berlin, and Ciudad de México. His PhD-project deals with materiality in art practices from postwar Guatemala. He formed part of the research training group “Cultures of Critique” at the Leuphana University (Lüneburg), was a Visiting Student Researcher at Stanford University, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Cambridge Visual Cultures, University of Cambridge (forthcoming: 2023). He has published articles and reviews in exhibition catalogues, magazines and journals, as well as in the anthology Museums, Transculturality and the Nation State: Case Studies from a Global Context. Together with other colleagues from the training group, he edited the anthology On Withdrawal: Scenes of Refusal, Disappearance, and Resilience in Art and Cultural Practices. He has spoken at conferences and symposia such as “In-Between: Art and Cultural Practices From Here”, organized between Stanford and Berkley University and held at the SFMOMA in 2023, “Worldviews: Latin American Art and the Decolonial Turn”, organized between Cambridge University and the University of the Arts in London and held online in 2021, and “Seeing More Queerly in 21st Century”, organized by the University of Miami in 2020. In 2023, he co-curated the panel “Touching Land: Creative Practices for Planetary Be/Longings” at the Latin American Studies Association Congress in Vancouver. He is part of the political group “VOCES de Guatemala en Berlín”.