F8: Living Heritage, Place and Community
Tracks
8
| Tuesday, December 1, 2026 |
| 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM |
| RH205 |
Overview
Stream: Provisional waitlist placeholder session
Paper / Session Submitter
Dr Victoria Vargas Downing
Independent Researcher
Independent
Decolonizing Heritage: Learning with the Atacama Desert, affect and Uywaña
Summary Abstract
This paper interrogates dominant Western frameworks of heritage and affect by foregrounding Indigenous ontologies of reciprocity and care. Centred on a lived experience in the Atacama Desert and a critical encounter at the Quillagua museum, it employs autoethnography and autotheory to explore uywaña, an Aymara principle of mutual upbringing among humans, non- humans, and ancestral beings. Through this lens, heritage emerges not as static objects or linear narratives but as dynamic, relational processes embedded in affective atmospheres and embodied practices. The discussion contrasts hegemonic conservation models with Indigenous approaches that privilege dialogue, coexistence, and interdependence, revealing how acts of care can unsettle colonial epistemologies. By weaving personal narrative with theoretical reflection, the presentation advocates for decolonial methodologies that embrace sentipensar (thinking-feeling) as a way to reconfigure museum practices and heritage policies. Ultimately, it proposes heritage as a living, ethical engagement grounded in reciprocity, affect, and the vitality of more-than-human worlds.
Biographies
Dr. Victoria Vargas-Downing is an independent interdisciplinary feminist and decolonial researcher based in the UK. She is interested in the intersection of art, heritage, and environmental humanities. She has worked on projects that have expanded environmental and climate activism in the UK, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Brazil.
Dr Shuchen Wang
Affiliated Researcher
Jyväskylä University
(En)Acting Living Heritage: Contemporary Art as Embodiment and Reinterpretation
Summary Abstract
Heritagisation often constrains community life by framing heritage as cultural capital for tourism, prompting residents to perform curated versions of the past. In contrast, post-growth perspectives—shaped by overconsumption, climate crises, and social fragmentation—highlight slowness as an ethical and political practice that reshapes daily life. This paper explores how ‘slowing-down’ can enact heritage through an alternative politics of time, emphasizing relational presence over commodification. While much research focuses on tourism, policy, or economic impact, less attention is given to the temporal and embodied ways residents inhabit heritage. To address this, the study demonstrates how the conceptual framework of Mediate (In)Motion—a participatory contemporary art intervention developed within a World Heritage context—could foster shared temporality, care, and attentiveness, reframing heritage as lived, relational time rather than static space.
Biographies
Dr. Shuchen Wang, DA, PhD, is an affiliated researcher and art curator based in Finland and Taiwan. Her work explores contemporary art, digital heritage, and museum practices, focusing on gender, coloniality, and cross-cultural exchanges, while bridging scholarship, curatorial projects, and innovative heritage technologies worldwide.
Mrs Marta Caradonna
Anthropologist
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche
Weaving Colonial Afterlives: The Filonardi Scroll as a Relational Prism between Ethiopia and Italy
Summary Abstract
This paper examines an Ethiopian parchment scroll from the private collection of Vincenzo Filonardi, a prominent figure in Italian colonial history. Guided by the Māori concepts of Tūhono (connectivity) and Whatua mai te aho (weaving threads), the study traces the object’s biography: from a ritual "aho" of spiritual protection in Ethiopia to a colonial trophy in a Roman household.
By integrating philology, anthropology, and heritage science, the research explores the scroll’s role as an active agent in contemporary decolonization and repatriation debates. It reframes the animal-skin manuscript not as a passive "exotic" commodity, but as a biological and spiritual extension of the Ethiopian landscape—a displaced fragment of whenua (land/identity). Ultimately, the study challenges traditional provenance research, transforming the scroll into a relational prism through which to negotiate power, memory, and ethical heritage practices in a postcolonial world.
By integrating philology, anthropology, and heritage science, the research explores the scroll’s role as an active agent in contemporary decolonization and repatriation debates. It reframes the animal-skin manuscript not as a passive "exotic" commodity, but as a biological and spiritual extension of the Ethiopian landscape—a displaced fragment of whenua (land/identity). Ultimately, the study challenges traditional provenance research, transforming the scroll into a relational prism through which to negotiate power, memory, and ethical heritage practices in a postcolonial world.
Biographies
Marta Caradonna is a cultural anthropologist at CNR - ILIESI (Rome), whose studies focused on Museum Anthropology, History of Anthropological Disciplines and Post-Colonial Heritage. Holds a Joint PhD (2018) in Historical and Social Anthropology (EHESS, Paris) and in Ethnology and Ethno-anthropology (Sapienza, Rome).
From 2005 to 2010 she held a teaching position at the University IUAV (Venice) in Museum Anthropology.
She is the scientific coordinator of a research project started in 2022 aimed to investigate the relationship between the colonial experience and the development of anthropology and ethnography in Italy.
Since January 2024, Marta Caradonna coordinates a scientific collaboration Agreement between Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee (ILIESI) – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Associazione Internazionale di Studi sul Mediterraneo e l’Oriente (ISMEO), Biblioteca nazionale centrale of Rome (BNCR), Sala delle collezioni orientali Biblioteca IsIAO and Museo delle Civiltà of Rome. This project employs an innovative approach by incorporating not only the colonial objects preserved at the Museo delle Civiltà, but also archival materials. The project employs a cross-disciplinary and participatory methodology, actively involving citizens and critically engaging with postcolonial and decolonial perspectives.
