Ch'ixi Epistemology and The Potosí Principle in the 21st Century

Abstract The author focuses on the project exhibition, “The Potosí Principle,” curated by Alice Creischer, Max Hinderer, and Andreas Siekmann Initially installed in Madrid in 2010 and then traveling to Berlin and La Paz, the show cut across the institutionally defined and often rigorously guarded boundaries between curatorial practice, aesthetic expression, and scholarly research to explore global capitalism's dynamics from the perspective of the Spanish colonial empire and its distinctive imagery. However, despite the exhibition's creative installation techniques and revisionist history, it generated a considerable scandal when a self-organized group of La Paz-based artists and scholars committed to anticolonial practices accused the curators of continuing the logic through which the modern West has represented others. The author argues that this criticism parallels the often-fraught negotiations between artists, curators, and curated cultures at the boundary zones between art frameworks.