Luisa Karman
Key information
- Qualifications
- MSc Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology (University of Oxford) | BA History of Art (SOAS & UCL Combined Honours)
- Thesis title
- Brazilian objects in UK Museums: Controversies and Possibilities
- Internal Supervisors
- Dr Polly Savage
Biography
Born and raised in São Paulo, Brasil, Luisa moved to London to study History of Art at SOAS and UCL, focusing on West African arts and their links to the African diasporas in Latin America.
Her thesis explored the place of African heritage in Brazilian art and nationhood through the work of Brazilian modernist Rubem Valentim and his treatment of the Afro-Brazilian religious universe through the visual language of geometric abstraction. Working at the intersection between art and cultural capital, she became fascinated by issues in Critical Museology and pursued an MSc in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
She worked closely with the collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum to analyse the links between object ownership, the British Empire, and the politics of representation through museum display. Her dissertation traced the trajectory of a collection of Afro-Brazilian liturgical objects, confiscated due to religious racism, kept under police custody, and released after 100 years thanks to the effort of religious communities, researchers, and museum workers - now engaged collectively in curating the objects in the Museu da República.
Expanding on this exercise of excavating collections with a commitment to heritage justice, Luisa is now a doctoral researcher engaged in mapping the biographies of Brazilian objects in UK museums, tracing how colonial and epistemological regimes of power influenced acquisition and the representation of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian peoples.
In parallel to her academic work, Luisa has worked as a researcher at Tate and the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation. She also created a multi-media online art platform, Artinerário/Artinerary, aimed at bridging the transatlantic gap by making art historical knowledge more widely accessible in Portuguese showcasing the work of emerging Brazilian artists to international audiences. Luisa has been awarded the CHASE AHRC Doctoral Studentship to support her research.
Research interests
- Critical Museology Heritage justice and restitution
- Politics of representation Contested ownership and reconciliation policies
- Museum decolonisation Collections of liturgical objects Afro-Brazilian culture, religion and arts
- Brazilian contemporary art
Personal links
Contact Luisa
- Social media