Today, curators and directors of leading biennials, fairs and museums strive to diligently comply with historical corrections of representation of all kinds. Among these corrections, the proliferation of works that stage ancestral references is notable. Functional and critical interculturalism has sparked an explosion of interest in artists who express their adherence to or belonging to multiple ethnic cultural profiles and the transmission of their codes in works of art. This intercultural meta-narrative, based on the unconditional equality of cultures, finds a relevant—and virtually unknown—precedent in the ancestralist movement, a modern art movement developed in Europe by Ecuadorian artists beginning in 1958. Rodolfo Kronfle’s talk will analyse the background and conditions that led to its emergence.

Rodolfo Kronfle is an Ecuatorian independent researcher and curator. Between 2003 and 2015, he edited RioRevuelto.net, the most extensive virtual archive of contemporary Ecuadorian art, after which he co-founded the art dissemination platform paralaje.xyz. He has carried out several revisions of local modern art and has published several works on Eduardo Solá Franco, including the complete volumes of his Illustrated Diaries 1935-1988. In 2011, he published the book Historia(s)_en el arte contemporáneo del Ecuador 1998-2009 (History(ies) in Contemporary Art in Ecuador 1998-2009) and, more recently, Limpio, lúcido y ardiente: Artes visuales y correato (Clean, Lucid and Ardent: Visual Arts and Correato) (Ecuador, 2007-2017). He has served as a juror for salons, scholarships, and biennials in several countries and also serves as an advisor to cultural institutions such as the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cuenca Biennial, and the Museo Casa del Alabado in Quito.