The Chakana or Andean cross is a pan-American symbol, it comes from the word chaka which means bridge or dam. It is a crossed path, a mountain, the in-between that connects the cardinal points, and the stairs that connects the cosmos, the sky and the underworld. The Chakana is characterised by creating bridges that connect different traditions, times and places, it is the place where time-space (Pacha) create each other; donde las ideas se cruzan entramando saberes y develando patrones.
From a decolonial approach, I contour methodological Chakanas to activate movimientos y momentos de tensión, ambivalencia y precariedad of different but coexisting conflictual strands. I use a decolonial framework to address the epistemology of this research as an enactive reflection on dominant institutional structures and practices. Through these 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.
This 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, as layers on the earth, and rethink how we understand and reshape the reality of heritage and contemporary art. It is the invitation for 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.
Here, I argue that contemporary art pulls the loose threads of that 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 interdependency of art and heritage rather than its separation, challenging accumulative, Cartesian, linear, extractive, and future-oriented logics of modernity present in Western conceptualisations of heritage. They create new patterns and emerging forms that re-weave, re-shape and rethink art and heritage relationships from a decolonial perspective and mutual creation. 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 attempting to heal colonial violences exercised, in objects, land, beings and their people, aiming for more-than-human healing, acercando, tocando y sanando.
