Appropriation or cannibalism? A look at an old question at the crossroads between art and subjectivity

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of the appropriation of the object in the work of art from a perspective crossed with the relations with the archive of the anthropophagic act in Latin America, understood as an act immersed in a particular way of mobilizing forms of subjectivity and of resistance. This implies understanding appropriation not as an artistic gesture of adopting the appearance and denying the functionality of the object, but as the inscription of a relationality between forms of subjectivity in conflict via the object in the work. This implies reviewing the inherited approach to appropriationism, exploring the ways in which anthropophagy implied a way of constituting subjectivity and transgression, and finally showing how this form of transgression can be read in some motivations of Colombian art.