Indigenous cultural production and Art History in Brazil: Between art and artifact, traps as a methodological problem

Abstract

Initially taken up in this article the debate between the British anthropologist Alfred Gell and the American philosopher Arthur C. Danto about the relationship between art / artifact to, from the questions raised about the notion of “trap”, confront these considerations with comparative analysis between cultural relativism and Amerindian perspectivism developed by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Then seeks to ascertain the impact of these ideas on the approach of cultural production of indigenous peoples in Brazil, examining a case study in relation to the recent conjuncture of assimilation and circulation of indigenous references in contemporary art system.