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Sanja Savkic Sebek is a scholar specialising in Latin American Indigenous societies’ art and visual culture, particularly focusing on Mesoamerica and New Spain. Upon completion of her PhD in Art History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), for which she received the Alfonso Caso Medal, her research won support from leading institutions such as UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (KHI) – Max-Planck-Institut [Max Planck Institute for Art History in Florence], where she held postdoctoral positions. Most recently, she worked as a research associate within the International Research Group “Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology,” affiliated with the KHI and the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is currently a visiting research fellow at the Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU) for the Arts of Africa, Oceania & the Americas, University of East Anglia, and an associate fellow at the KHI.
Sanja’s research lies at the intersection between art history, anthropology, and archaeology, exploring themes such as the mobility of images and objects, materiality, colour, time and space in visual arts and architecture, Maya and Aztec writing systems and their relations with visual arts, and Mexican feather art. Among her recent publications is Indigenous Visual Cultures and Aesthetic Practices in the Americas’ Past and Present, edited with Hannah Baader (Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, 2019), and her forthcoming publications include The Challenge of Mobile Images and Objects in Mesoamerica, edited with Rex Koontz, and Material Transformations in Amerindian Artistic Practices (edited with Bat-ami Artzi and Elizabeth Baquedano).
During her stay at the SRU, Sanja will be working on the introduction to the latter book and preparing the volume for its publication. This volume draws from the academic event Amerindian Art Histories and Archaeologies: A KHI – UCL Symposium on Material Transformations in the Indigenous Americas. It brings together sixteen studies exploring the significance of materiality and material transformations in the context of ancient, colonial, and contemporary indigenous societies across North, Central, and South America.