Indigenous Histories

Centuries of art celebrating a global panorama of Indigenous cultures

Continuing the work of the acclaimed Afro-Atlantic Histories, this publication from the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) compiles the collective curatorship and research carried out by artists and scholars from various territories and Indigenous groups in Australia, North America, South America and Scandinavia.

For the traveling exhibition, MASP, in collaboration with Kode Bergen Art Museum, invited guest curators from Indigenous nations including Inuit, Maori and Sámi. With over 150 artists included, the featured artworks range from the historical to the contemporary-from 17th-century colonial religious paintings to modern film and video installations-in order to trace the impact of European colonization on Indigenous visual culture.

Despite its scope, the aim of Indigenous Histories is not to fully represent the vast and complex histories of each region, but rather to provide a cross section, fragment or sample of these histories in a concise but relevant selection in order to create juxtapositions of these groups on a global scale.