Dis(Possession)

(DIS)POSSESSION (Despojo): different mechanisms of expropriation comprising looting, confiscation, and sale under duress, facilitated by legal or extra-legal means (or both). Banu Karaca has proposed, beyond the lenses of land tenure and disenfranchisement, to conceptualize dispossession as a contradictory process that at the same time produces absence (loss) and presence (redistribution). This redistribution [in the case of things, objects, arts] not only obscures the context from which they emerge and the violent conditions under which they change hands; it also creates complex networks of beneficiaries and different forms of involvement. More broadly, dispossession fundamentally shapes the production of knowledge and perception of art objects, as well as the institutional contexts of the art world, including museums, art historical narratives, and archives. Thank you Memory Biwa for the abrecaminos.

Nicolás Vizcaíno Sánchez is an Afro-descendant artist based between Bogotá and Quibdó, Colombia, whose work spans multimedia installations, critical writing, editorial practice, and curatorial and socially engaged projects on the counternarratives that distort and fight hegemonic power structures.