This volume explores how visual arts functioned in the indigenous pre- and post-conquest New World as vehicles of social, religious, and political identity. Twelve scholars in the field of visual arts examine indigenous artistic expressions in the American continent from the pre-Hispanic age to the present. The contributions offer new interpretations of materials, objects, and techniques based on a critical analysis of historical and iconographic sources and argue that indigenous agency in the continent has been primarily conceived and expressed in visual forms in spite of the textual epistemology imposed since the conquest.

Contributors are: Miguel Arisa, Mary Brown, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, Alessia Frassani, Jeremy James George, Orlando Hernández Ying, Angela Herren Rajagopalan, Keith Jordan, Lorena Tezanos Toral, Marcus B. Burke, and Lawrence Waldron.