Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso on Decoloniality and Art: To Intervene in the Museum or to Dynamite It?

Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, a decolonial thinker from a working-class background, reflects on art and decoloniality in an essay published by Afterall on March 24, 2021. Originally part of ArtSchool's Decolonisation in the 2020s series, the essay was produced in partnership with Museu de Arte de São Paulo, UAL's Decolonising Arts Institute, and Goldsmiths Department of Visual Cultures. Espinosa-Miñoso draws on Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of intertwined artistic, functional, sacred, and secular spheres to critique Western modernity's separation of life into specialized domains, including art. She argues that coloniality has imposed Western aesthetic criteria globally, delegitimizing non-Western creative practices as 'handicraft' or 'folklore.' Citing Zulma Palermo and Adolfo Albán Achinte, she describes how colonial violence erased native techniques and materials. Espinosa-Miñoso proposes 'aesthetic/symbolic marronage'—inspired by Hourya Bentouhami's 'feminism of marronage'—as a methodology for the oppressed to interrupt dominant racist discourses and reclaim self-representation. She asserts that decolonization requires more than opening museum doors; it demands questioning the very existence of art as a separate sphere and 'dynamiting' the museum as a cemetery of dead objects. The essay concludes by asking how to restore art's sacredness and reconnect it to situated sensitivity, paraphrasing Anzaldúa's call to stop importing Greek myths and Cartesian splits.