Suarez’s research for the Critical Heritage Ecologies project examines contemporary art and heritage practices, focusing on their role in processes of ecological reparation. The project draws inspiration from the intersection of reparation and ecology as explored by Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, and Maddalena Tacchetti [1], with a particular emphasis on post-conflict Colombia. As these authors highlight, environmental degradation and social injustice are deeply intertwined. In Colombia, as in other parts of Latin America, these entanglements manifest in complex ways due to the enduring legacies of colonialism and the dynamics of extractivism.
The project aims to explore how participatory and community-based artistic and heritage practices emerge as essential spaces for rethinking, broadening, and enacting reparations, as they emphasize the interconnectedness of humans and the more-than-human world. By focusing on grassroots, bottom-up approaches, the research investigates how these practices challenge and transcend institutional and legal frameworks that traditionally define reparations. This perspective reconsiders the meanings of damage and reparation, as well as the methods for implementing them.
[1] Papadopoulos, Dimitris, María Puig de la Bellacasa, and Maddalena Tacchetti, eds. Ecological Reparation : Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2023.
Critical Heritage Ecologies 