Glacial Conversations is a gathering initiated by Teresa Borasino as part of her artistic proposal for the exhibition Sensing the Ways, in Casco Art Institue.

This event builds upon Teresa’s long-term research, Glacial Resurgence, which focuses on the rapidly shrinking Quelccaya—the world’s largest tropical glacier, now redefined as a sacrifice zone for lithium mining. The term “sacrifice zone” refers to territories devastated by colonial violence for capital accumulation. Yet, rooted in the Latin “sacrare”—to make sacred—it also holds the potential for reverence. Glacial Resurgence is grounded in this paradox: a call to reclaim desecrated lands as sacred sites and to cultivate pluriversal alternatives that center the care of all living beings, countering extractive worldviews.

The program invites reflection through embodied practice and ritual performance and unfolds through dialogue with Yolanda Quispe and Vito Calderón, Teresa’s co-weavers and interlocutors from Andean territories of extraction; interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and academic, Macarena Gómez-Barris; and Peruvian artist and filmmaker Mirella Moschella. Together, these contributions bring forward relational epistemologies long obscured by dominant paradigms, centering decolonial approaches to knowledge, arts, and resistance.

“Extraction is not only about the removal of resources—it is a system of perception that renders certain life forms and territories as inert, invisible, and available for domination.”
— Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone

Link to event here.