Professor Francisco Huichaqueo participated in the NAISA 2026 international conference
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The faculty member from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Concepción participated as a speaker in two international academic panels and served as co-curator of the official art exhibition of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA 2026). For the first time in its history, the conference was held in Abya Yala (Latin America), consolidating Wallmapu as an international space for indigenous thought and the arts.
The 17th Congress of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA 2026), held from July 22 to 24 in Temuco (Wallmapu), marked a milestone for Indigenous studies worldwide, as it was held in Abya Yala (Latin America) for the first time since the association's founding. The conference was chaired by Mapuche scholar Luis Cárcamo-Huechante, professor at the University of Texas, who advocated for this edition to take place in Temuco (Wallmapu), decentralizing an event historically held in the Global North and promoting the recognition of indigenous territories as sites of knowledge production.
The organization of NAISA 2026 in Wallmapu was an event of major academic, political, and cultural significance, bringing together researchers, artists, curators, traditional authorities, and representatives of indigenous peoples from different territories around the world. More than a change of venue, this edition created a space for Indigenous nations to engage in dialogue from within their own territories, recognizing Wallmapu as a meeting place where diverse indigenous cultures were welcomed and able to share their knowledge, experiences, and creative processes on equal terms.
In this context, Francisco Huichaqueo, a faculty member of the Department of Visual Arts of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts at the University of Concepción, played a prominent role in the conference, bringing together research, artistic creation, and curatorial practice. His participation contributed to strengthening the international presence of the University of Concepción within one of the leading spaces for reflection on memory, heritage, decolonization, and cultural sovereignty.
One of the highlights of his participation was his presentation in the panel “Anticolonial Aesthetics: Regimes of representation, counter-visualities, and political imagination,” coordinated by Marcela Huitraiqueo and held at the San Francisco Campus of the Catholic University of Temuco. In this session, he shared the panel with Kutral Vargas Huaiquimilla, Castro Hueche, Aymara artist Natalia Montoya, and Gonzalo Castro Colimil, presenting a reflection on contemporary Mapuche art as a practice of re-existence, memory, visual sovereignty, and political thought. His contribution addressed debates surrounding anticolonial aesthetics and Indigenous forms of embodied knowledge production through artistic creation.
He also participated in the international panel “Creation as remedy: symbols, materialities, and narratives against colonial trauma,” alongside Amalia Córdova of the Smithsonian Institution; Angelo Baca, of the Diné (Navajo) Nation and the Rhode Island School of Design; César Abadía-Barrero and Catalina Alvarado Cañuta of the University of Connecticut; and Alfonso García Hernández, an elder traditional healer of the Uitoto people of the Colombian Amazon.
In this session, he presented the paper “Accompanying the ancestors of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin: restitution and museum justice in the Mapuche case,” focusing on processes of heritage restitution, historical reparation, and museum justice from a Mapuche perspective. His presentation addressed the accompaniment of ancestral Mapuche collections held at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, proposing a reflection on the role of museums in processes of historical reparation and cultural restitution. The panel brought together experiences connecting art, health, memory, materialities, and healing practices in response to colonial trauma.
Co-Curatorship of the Official Art Exhibition
In addition to his academic participation, Francisco Huichaqueo was part of the co-curatorial team for the international exhibition “Wiñokintun: creation, memories, and territories from Wallmapu,” which opened on July 22 as part of the official arts program of NAISA 2026.
The exhibition was organized and curated by Marcela Huitraiqueo, who led the curatorial proposal and overall coordination of the project. The co-curatorship and exhibition design were developed collaboratively by Francisco Huichaqueo, Javiera Velázquez Painen, and Noelia Figueroa Burdiles through a horizontal working methodology that brought together different curatorial and territorial perspectives.
Presented simultaneously at the Exhibition Hall of the San Francisco Campus of the Catholic University of Temuco and at the Regional Museum of Araucanía, the exhibition offered a journey through diverse contemporary creative practices from Wallmapu, bringing together works by Shakin Huaiquil, Inchiw, Francisco Huichaqueo, Paty Pichún, Pablo Lincura, Pewma, Rocío Muñoz, Yimara Praihuan, Gonzalo Castro Colimil, Marcela Huitraiqueo, Noelia Figueroa Burdiles, Javiera Velázquez Painen, Lilen Gaete, and Valeria Gaete.
The exhibition established a dialogue between contemporary Mapuche artistic practices and international debates on memory, territory, identities, decolonization, and cultural sovereignty, becoming one of the conference's main exhibition spaces.
Francisco Huichaqueo's participation in NAISA 2026 reaffirms the University of Concepción's commitment to research, artistic creation, and the internationalization of knowledge, projecting the work developed within the Faculty of Humanities and Arts onto one of the world's most relevant academic and cultural platforms for Indigenous studies and the Indigenous arts.
