Re-staging Ritual. Eco-ritual Performance and the Mediation of the Ecological Imperative in Latin-American Contemporary Art

Performance as a ritual practice is a complex phenomenon in art history that has grabbed little attention. This dual experience is linked with the spiritual and the aesthetic field, and it also has a strong bond with the ecological crisis. Through the proposed category of eco- rituals, the artists operate in the terrain of ecological activism and create a dialogue with socio-environmental struggles and indigenous cosmopolitics (Stangers, Dela Cadena), among other perspectives.

In this regard, the work produced by Latin-American artists such as Cecilia Vicuña (Chili, 1948), María Evelia Marmolejo (Colombia, 1958), Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico, 1958), Régina José Galindo (Guatemala, 1974), Gbariela Carneiro da Cuhna (Brazil 1982) and Lucía Monge (Peru, 1983) constitutes a coherent corpus relevant for the discussion. In addition, the performances produced by those artists also integrate cultural aspects from different ethnicities and indigenous groups, for example soliciting the participation of a given indigenous community, reproducing their symbols, and reinterpreting cosmologies present in myths or constructing aesthetic devices that prompt collaboration and facilitate insertion in traditional festivities and rituals.

In these artistic practices, the re-staging of the ritual is the main tool or the principal aesthetic strategy to address topics such as the loss of biodiversity, the destruction caused by extractivism and the so-called mega proyectos de muerte (mega-projects of death), and last but not least the contamination, overexploitation and privatization of water. Through the performance practice and the instrumentalization of ritual, the artists achieve different objectives such as community participation and social cohesion, the insertion of certain relegated worldviews and knowledge into the collective memory and the public arena, and the creation of a visual corpus [1] that is highly political in terms of its content, symbols, icons, and visual vocabulary displayed.

In terms of methodology, to tackle such a complex practice, and given the nature of the eco- ritual performances, it is necessary to implement a flexible methodology that borrows vocabulary, concepts, tools, and techniques from different disciplines such as art history, images studies, social and visual anthropology, history of religions, and performance studies, among others. (399)

[1] By visual corpus I mean video, interviews, texts, social media posts, documentation images, artistic images, texts, etc.

Keywords: Eco-rituals, performative rituals, ecological crisis, indigenous cosmopolitics, transmediality, ecological imperative, indigenous epistemologies, political iconography, ecological activism, socio-environmental struggles, postproduction, ritualistic visuality, ritual aesthetics, ecofeminism