Spirits, liquid bodies, and more-than-human entities in Indigenous cosmologies

Tsionki, Marianna ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7770-2076 (2025) Spirits, liquid bodies, and more-than-human entities in Indigenous cosmologies. In: Going Feral: Speculative Approaches to Animism in the Arts. Curating and Interpreting Culture . Vernon Press, Delaware, United States, pp. 157-177. ISBN 979-8-8819-0322-0

Abstract

This chapter examines how Indigenous artists in Latin America reengage animism as a decolonial strategy, challenging the Western nature/culture divide and dominant extractivist narratives. Drawing on Amerindian perspectivism and multinaturalism, it explores the interconnectedness between human and more-than-human entities in Amazonian and Mapuche cosmologies. Through close analysis of works by Sueli Maxakali and Seba Calfuqueo, it demonstrates how Indigenous artistic practices articulate spiritual, ecological, and political resistance to colonial and neoliberal violence. Maxakali’s film and photography highlight Tikmũ’ũn relationships with spirit-beings and ancestral land, while Calfuqueo’s installations and performances develop a critical approach to water commodification and binary modes of existence. These practices not only preserve cultural knowledge but also enact alternative onto-epistemologies rooted in kinship, reciprocity, and resistance. The essay calls for deeper engagement with Indigenous perspectives in postcolonial theory and environmental humanities, proposing Indigenous art practices as a site of countervisual resistance and a radical reimagining of human–nonhuman relations.

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