Dr. Sanja Savkić Šebek
Associate Researcher
The International Research Group “Bilderfahrzeuge: Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology”
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut
Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Aktuelle Informationen zum Projekt finden Sie auf der Webseite: https://bilderfahrzeuge.hypotheses.org/
Research interests
Amerindian arts and visual history, past and present; Mesoamerican/ Pre-Columbian/ Maya arts and visual history; Indigenous knowledge / theories and (artistic) practices; global art histories and historiography of art; different concepts of and approaches to image; mobility/ migration of images, objects, aesthetic practices, ideas, and transfer of knowledge cross-culturally; materiality in art; ritual art; ways of appropriations of old and actual objects and forms: reuse, imitations, evocations; place making; time and space in visual arts and architecture; landscape, built environment and ritual pathways; Maya and Aztec writing systems; Amerindian collections and exhibition practices
Vita
Sanja Savkić Šebek studied Hispanic philology at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. She is an art historian who received her MA and PhD from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she studied indigenous arts from the Americas. Universidad Nacional awarded her doctoral dissertation on ancient Maya art and architecture with the Alfonso Caso Medal. Sanja was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas – UNAM, the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, and at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (KHI) in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. In Berlin, she also collaborated with the Ethnologisches Museum concerning the exhibition of its Mesoamerican collection at the Humboldt Forum. Presently she holds the position of associate researcher in the international research group “Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology,” and is affiliated to the KHI and Humboldt University of Berlin. She works on her research project “The Lives of Things in Mesoamerica,” which considers Mesoamerican images and objects within a larger framework of relational ontologies to examine the ways in which the social lives of human and other-than-human actors intersect and interact. This approach is thereby located at the crossroads of art history and anthropology. On the one hand, this project draws from A. Warburg’s reflections on the migration of images, forms and ideas, while also pursuing an open approach through the heuristic potential of native theories and (artistic) practices.
Publications (selected)
Books (Editorships/ Monographs)
with Hannah Baader, Culturas visuales indígenas y las prácticas estéticas en las Américas desde la antigüedad hasta el presente [Indigenous Visual Cultures and Aesthetic Practices in the Americas’ Past and Present], Estudios Indiana 13, Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2019, 431 pp. ISBN: 978-3-7861-2831-1 (in paperback and Open Access)
https://www.iai.spk-berlin.de/fileadmin/dokumentenbibliothek/Estudios_Indiana/EI-13-web.pdf
Valores plástico-formales del arte maya del Preclásico tardío a partir de las configuraciones visuales de San Bartolo, Petén, Guatemala (Doctoral Dissertation in Art History (2012), Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM), Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Dirección General de Publicaciones y Fomento Editorial – Dirección General de Cómputo y Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación – Dirección General de Evaluación Institucional – Colección Ciencia Nueva: Doctorados UNAM, 2016, 366 pp., and 2 plates. ISBN: 978-607-02-5715-5 (Ebook)
http://www.ciencianueva.unam.mx/handle/123456789/165
URI: http://132.248.10.225:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/165
Journal essays/ articles
Forthcoming, with Alonso Rodrigo Zamora Corona, “Amantecayotl Glyphs Revisited: Writing and Featherworking in the Florentine Codex”, in: Miradas: Decolonial Theory, Transculturation, and Latin American Positions – Entangling Art Histories, University of Heidelberg.
“Pirámide de las Pinturas de San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala: espacialidad”, in: Estudios de Cultura Maya, vol. L, Mexico: Centro de Estudios Mayas, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM, 2017, pp. 61–94.
“Composition, perception and signification of the Maya Late Preclassic images on the corners of the edifices”, in: Matica Srpska Proceedings for Fine Arts 42, Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 2014, pp. 13–26.
“Architecture at San Bartolo, El Peten, Guatemala: Object and Subject”, in: Anthropology 14, vol. 1, Journal of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Belgrade: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, 2014, pp. 79–95.
“Léxico cromático y la ideología maya”, in: Estudios de Cultura Maya 36, Mexico: Centro de Estudios Mayas, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM, 2011, pp. 99–119.
Essays for edited volumes
Forthcoming, “La serpiente con plumas y otros polimorfos con rasgos serpentinos en la imaginería maya temprana”, in: Animalística: Memorias del XXXVIII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, Mexico City.
Forthcoming, “La integración plástica en la sexta fase arquitectónica del grupo Las Pinturas de San Bartolo, Guatemala”, in: Arquitectura y Otras Artes, ed. by Verónica Hernández Díaz, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, Mexico City.
with Erik Velásquez García, “Writing as a Visual Art: The Maya Script”, in: Motion: Transformation, Proceedings of the 35th Congress of the International Committee of the History of Arts (Florence, 1–6 Sep. 2019), Part 1, ed. by Marzia Faietti and Gerhard Wolf, Bologna: Bononia University Press, pp. 235–242, 2021.
“Introducción. Manifestaciones y prácticas visuales amerindias”, and “Introduction. Amerindian Visual Manifestations and Practices”, in: Sanja Savkić, ed., en colaboración con Hannah Baader, Culturas visuales indígenas y las prácticas estéticas en las Américas desde la antigüedad hasta el presente, Estudios Indiana 13, Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gebr. Mann Verlag, pp. 7–27 and 29–48, 2019.
“The Appropriation of Space and Time through the Built Environment: The Case of the Las Pinturas Group at San Bartolo, Guatemala”, in: Signs of Place: A Visual Interpretation of Landscape, Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 69, ed. by Rebecca Döhl and Julian Jansen van Rensburg. Berlin: Edition Topoi, pp. 185–199, 2019. DOI 10.17171/3-69.
with Massimo Stefani, “La Gran Plaza de Calakmul en el Preclásico tardío”, in: Proceedings of the Primer Congreso Internacional Patrimonio Cultural y Nuevas Tecnologías: Una Visión Contemporánea, online publication, 2015. S. Savkic: Text; M. Stefani: 3D images and videos.