ABSTRACT
Tony Bennett, Ben Dibley and Michelle Kelly describe a “relatively autonomous Indigenous cultural field that occupies a distinctive position within the national cultural field” in Australia. Since the 1970s, a model for the support of Indigenous artwork has been constructed there. Some powerful recent projects question Brazil’s history and the history of Brazilian art from a decolonial perspective. Indigenous artist Denilson Baniwa, for instance, produces a parody of the iconography of colonial Brazil. The museum has purchased some works by contemporary Indigenous artists on an occasion and has displayed them in its permanent exhibition, redesigned to reflect, among other things, the influence of this contact with Indigenous curators and artists. The situation of Indigenous artists and intellectuals in Brazil today did change compared to a decade ago. Agents and institutions seem to be opening up space for gradual reclassifications and re-conceptualizations, as both the Brazilian and Australian cases suggest.
