Victoria Vargas Downing

Profile

I am originally from Chile, I grew up in the Atacama desert a place that has strongly influenced my research and ways of thinking, I studied Theory and history of art at the university of Chile, where I graduated as the first of my class and I also hold a Curating Diploma (First Class).

I arrived at the University of Leeds to study for my MA in Arts Management and Heritage Studies degree, graduating with a distinction.

I finished my PhD thesis ‘Following threads, touching knots: Decolonising Heritage through Contemporary Art’ under the supervision of Nick Cass and Helen Graham at FAHACS, where I was awarded Excellence in Doctoral Research.

Since then, I have been navigating different interdisciplinary projects, such as Moving Mountains (PI: Rebecca Jarman (where I worked as Engagement Fellow, this project explored places that have been destroyed and created by geological events such as earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and mining disasters.

It traces the imprints of mountains that move and examines the ecosystems that they generate.

The research on Landslides in Yungay (Peru) and Aberfan (Wales) upholds a link with the ontological questions developed in my thesis, thinking with human and more-than-human energies and forces as well as multilingual elements.

For this project, we developed multilingual workshops in Yungay and Aberfan, a non-academic book with artists, academics, climbers and survivors, called ‘Nosotros los Andes’, a symposium entitled ‘Subterranean forces’ , a presentation at the conference Learning with Mountains in Cyprus and an upcoming podcast.

I also worked as a Research Assistant for Artivist crossings, artistic and activist interventions for climate and social Justice in Buenos Aires and Leeds, a transdisciplinary partnership between the University of Leeds and Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (IIGG) at Universidad de Buenos Aires.

I contributed with decolonial feminist perspective and my experitise in contemporary Latin American art to deliver workshops in Argentina and a symposium in the UK on Artivist approaches to climate and social justice.

Currently I am working with Gabriela Lopez creating and curating a VR museum for water@leeds, the exhibition entitled ‘More than Water: knowledges confluence’ Explores the intersections between water research and emotional, social, and environmental understandings of water.

It brings together artistic and academic work—photos, artworks, and videos—around themes such as water security, sanitation, and the urban and ecological forces shaping our watery worlds.

It is inspired by three interdisciplinary projects—From Rivers to Oceans, GCRF Water Security hub, and Cities and Water—and offers an immersive space to engage with how water research is always more than water.

Responsibilities

• International Research Facilitator
• water@leeds

Research interests

I have developed a transdisciplinary line of work contributing to projects dealing with heritage, contemporary art, indigenous knowledges and epistemologies, climate and social justice, environmental humanities and artivism.

My research is a feminist and decolonial approach to heritage through contemporary art. In my work and writing, I try not to follow a linear path, but rather, I weave arguments to find critical knots to give them a new form or unknot them.

My work is composed of little gestures and reparative acts that I hope move the reader to look for other forms of healing colonial violence. I try to understand the world from the interdependence, unweaving the ontological assumptions of Cartesian thought. I do my best to pay my respect to my ancestors, even when the information may not be there.

Published work

1. 'Changing the language, changing heritage: the future behind’, 10 Years Special Issue International Journal of Critical Heritage Studies. Volume 30

2. Nosotros los Andes, ed collection, Rebecca Jarman & Victoria Vargas eds, Artificio Editora, Colombia. September. 2024

3. ‘On speaking’ in Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies; Eds. King Racheal & Rico, Trinidad. UCL Press, p.133-136

4. ‘Reweaving from the future: Patricia Domínguez and Victoria Vargas-Downing in conversation' in Parallax special issue: Reading Otherwise. Parallax, 29(2), 210–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2023.2271734

Upcoming Publications

• ‘Pulling threads: decolonising heritage through contemporary Art’ in Working Disobedience Encounter, Latin Elephant, Tate Exchange & Gasworks, London. (on printing, (On printing)
• ‘Learning from the Desert: Heritage, Affect and Uywaña’ in International Handbook of Heritage and Affect. Jacque Micieli Voutsinas and Angela M. Person, Eds. Routledge and Oklahoma University press (Submitted) (March 2025).

Research interests

• Latin American Art
• Decolonial & anticolonial thoght and practice
• Environmental humanities
• Art and Actvism
• Museums and Galleries
• Eco-Feminism
• Indigenous knowledge systems.

Qualifications

• PhD, Cultural Studies (Excellence), FAHACS, University of Leeds
• MA Arts Management and Heritage studies (Distinction), University of Leeds
• BA Fine Arts, major in Theory and History of Arts (Excellence), Universidad de Chile
• Curating Diploma (Excellence), Universidad Adolfo Ibanez, Chile

Professional memberships

• Association of Critical Heritage studies
• Society for Latin American Studies
• Ventana conference on decolonisation
• Mapping colonial histories network