Victoria Vargas Downing

I am originally from Chile, I arrived at University of Leeds for my MA in Arts Management and Heritage Studies (Distinction) I also hold a BA in Arts with major in Theory and History of Arts from the University of Chile (First Class) and Curating Diploma (First Class). I finished my PhD thesis ‘Following threads, touching knots: Decolonising Heritage through Contemporary Art’ under the supervision of Nick Cass and Helen Graham at FAHACS, awarding Excellence in Doctoral Research.

My thesis is a feminist and decolonial approach to heritage through contemporary art. Through a decolonial and feminist framework I address the epistemology of the research as an enactive reflection on dominant institutional structures and practices. I developed a methodology based on the Chakana (Andean Cross) to activate movimientos y momentos de tensión, ambivalencia y precariedad of different but coexisting conflictual strands (for example, writing a decolonial research within a colonial institution, or research heritage through decolonial lens). By creating methodological and metaphorical Chakanas, I bridge the multiple dimensions of art and heritage, arguing for their mutual constitution, reflecting, and enacting non-Western ontologies that reshape the meaning of heritage.

My research invites the reader to embrace discomfort and trust an ambivalent and precarious path, where tension is productive to work and think through.

It is also, an invitation to be open to other forms of knowledges, to unveil layers of thought and to rethink how we understand and reshape the reality of heritage and contemporary art. It is an invitation to rebalance voices y silencios, to sow semillas decoloniales, and to follow the threads and touch the knots of the fabric composed by contemporary art and heritage.

I argue that contemporary art pulls the loose threads of this symbolic fabric, allowing us to unweave the ontological assumptions present in Western heritage conceptions. In this mutual interaction, the artworks I analyse, such as Natalia Montoya, Nicolás Grum, Patricia Domínguez and Cecilia Vicuña, activate and visualise conflicts, tensions, frictions, and healings. They exemplify the interdependence of art and heritage rather than their separation, challenging the accumulative, Cartesian, linear, extractive, and future-oriented logics of modernity present in Western conceptualisations of heritage. They create new patterns and emergent forms that reweave, reshape and rethink the relationship between art and heritage from a decolonial perspective and as mutual creations. These entanglements propose alternatives to address the conflictive history of heritage practices, where the artworks work as reparative acts, where the materiality creates and recreates a symbolic world that seeks to heal colonial violences exercised in objects, land, beings and their people, aiming at more-than-human healing, acercando, tocando y sanando.

Currently I’m working as Engagement Fellow of Moving Mountains (PI: Rebecca Jarman) in LCS and Research Project Assistant of the ISF-ARC Artivist Crossings at the SoG.

Both projects relate different interests, Moving Mountains research on Landslides in Yungay (Peru) and Aberfan (Wales) upholds a link with the ontological questions developed in my thesis, thinking with human and more-than-human energies and forces. Here I work with Rebecca Jarman in the delivering of multilingual workshops, the edition of an upcoming book ‘Nosotros los Andes’ with artists, academics, climber and survivors, and an upcoming conference and podcast.

While on Artivist crossings, I have been researching artistic and activist interventions for climate Justice in Buenos Aires and Leeds. In here, I have delivered workshops, coordinated activities such as a symposium and we are currently developing an upcoming article.

I am also chair of the academic committee of Ventana conference on Decolonisation, Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, and coordinator of the ACHS Early Career Researchers Netwok.

As LAHRI Fellow I will be developing the proposal of my thesis as a monograph, and a funding proposal

Publications

Claro, P. D., Vargas-Downing, V., Caspari, M., & Daly, R. (2023). Reweaving from the future: Patricia Domínguez and Victoria Vargas-Downing in conversation. Parallax, 29(2), 210–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2023.2271734

Upcoming Journals Articles, and book chapters

Vargas-Downing, V. Changing Language, Changing Heritage: The Future Behind Us. International Journal of Heritage Studies, (May 2024 expected)

Vargas-Downing, V. On Speaking, Methods and methodologies in Heritage Studies. Ed. Rico, T & King, R. June, 2024.p 133-136. UCL Press (Printing)

Vargas-Downing, V. Learning from the Atacama Desert, Heritage, affect and Uywaña, in International Handbook of Heritage and Affect Routledge, (Expected Sep 2024)

Vargas-Downing, V.; Jarman R. Introducción. in Nosotros, Los Andes, ed. Jarman R. & Vargas-Downing V. Artificio editora Colombia. (June, 2024)

Keynote presentations:

  Semiller decolonial, Erasmus University, 9^th of April 2024

• Weaving Chakanas, methodological bridges for enactive research. Global research development Seminar, Erasmus University, 9^th of April 2024

Papers and presentation in conferences and symposiums (Selected)

1. ‘Heritage and Affect’, Oklahoma University. Nov 2023 Paper: Heritage, affect and Uywana.
2. ‘What happens next: radical creative writing symposium’ Salford University, July 2023. Paper: Decolonising academic writing.
3. Association of Critical Heritage Studies: Interculturalities, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile December 4th - 7th, 2022:

• 10 Years Association of Critical Heritage studies (Round table)
• Moderator: Decolonising Heritage through contemporary art, conversation with Patricia Domínguez, Nicolas Grum and Natalia Montoya
• Individual paper: ‘Pulling threads, decolonising heritage through contemporary art’
  4. Working disobedience international encounter by Latin Elephant, Tate exchange and Gasworks, London February, 2022.
  5. Decolonisation & New Museum Paradigm, by Postcolonial Heritage Research Group, University of Hull, Virtual. October 14th - 15th, 2021, Paper: Restitution Strings, from logics of accumulation to logics of reparation and care in the work of Nicolas Grum.
  6. ‘I, We, They, The other: deconstructing identity in Latin America’ Postgraduates in Latin American studies PILAS conference 2021, Virtual. July 1st - 2nd, 2021.Association of Critical Heritage Studies: Futures Biannual conference, ACHS Virtual. August 26th-30th, 2020
  7. New Voices in Postcolonial Studies: Interdisciplinary Imaginations, Critical Confrontations, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. October 30th, 2019.
  8. Latin American Art and Cultural Research Symposium in the UK: Art + Identity, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. June 1st, 2019.

Coordination and execution of Curatorial Projects, Conferences & Workshops  (selected)

• Cruces Artivistas, Ciclo de charlas, Instituto Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 2024
• Coordination Uncomfortable Monuments walking activity, at ACHS 2022, Interculturalities. December 2022
• Virtual touching workshop, at Generative encounters: Routes into experimental academic writing, University of Leeds, virtual, 23rd September 2022
• Khipu Workshop, Exposed Arts Project Space Co-curation of workshop, London United Kingdom, 13th October 2019
• Transitions Perspectives from in Between, Krinzinger Projecte, Vienna, Austria, 18th September - 4th November 2017
• Sense of Line, Drawings by Imtiaz Dharker, Co-curation, Project Space FAHACS Leeds, United Kingdom, July 2017

  Curatorial Residences and other projects

• What Could/Should Curating Do, curatorial residence, Curatorial Residence, Belgrade, Serbia. August 2019-November 2019
• Curatorial Retreat for Emergent Curator Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA, USA. June 2018
• Curators Agenda, Curatorial Residence by Block Frei. Curatorial residence Program in Vienna, Austria. September 2017 - November 2017
• Leeds Student Union Chilean Mural Restoration Development and curation of project. April 2017 - December 2017
• Artistic Residence Habeas Data III, Curatoría Forense y Cooperativa de Arte, Sao Paulo, Brazil, January 2016