Dr. Ryan Clasby, Curator of Global Indigenous Art and Lifeways at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, will conduct research in preparation for the major exhibition, Tangled Vines: Art of the Amazon. At a time when the Amazon Rainforest is increasingly framed within global economic interests and approaches an ecological tipping point, this exhibition will champion the innovative corpus of pan-Amazonian contemporary art that embodies the lived experiences of Amazonian people. Through a unique curatorial framework, Tangled Vines will incorporate a historically engaged discourse delineating the complex processes and nuanced contexts of contemporary Amazonian art’s strategic innovation. Tangled Vines will also showcase the rich, intermedia approaches within Amazonian art as artists adapt traditional materials and forms, including ceramics, textiles, wood, and bark paper with contemporary perspectives such as canvas painting, film, photography, murals, sculpture, and performance.

With the Warhol Foundation’s support, Clasby will conduct field research across the culturally and environmentally diverse Amazon to secure relationships with artists, collaborators, advisors, and communities. He will investigate the entangled histories that shape Amazonian art, such as colonialism, climate change, socio-economic pressures, tourism, and more. This research will also support the development of an accompanying international artist residency at the Spencer Museum, exhibition programming including lectures and artist workshops and a scholarly exhibition catalogue. These components will provide global platforms for Amazonian artists to express to their artistic practices, rectifying the underdeveloped and stereotyped knowledge of the region.