Anabelle Rodríguez (The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative Predoctoral Fellow) is an artist/curator/educator from Puerto Rico and a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University. Her dissertation is titled Curating Xunantunich and it is based on fieldwork and archival research related to the preservation of culture and nature at the Xunantunich Archaeological Reserve, a popular tourist attraction in Belize, Central America. Before joining Rutgers, Anabelle curated exhibitions for alternative art spaces, cultural organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies in Philadelphia and New York City. She is the founder of an independent research platform called The ~curARTorial LAB and her current interests include: art + anthropology; anthropologies and sociologies of art; art as craft/craft as art; art law and repatriation; Caribbean archaeology and Indigenous identities; cultural imperialisms and (de)coloniality; experimental ethnographies; feminist, queer, and Indigenous art histories; the illicit traffic of global antiquities; natureculture preservation; peripheral art worlds; problematic archives and collections; sacred sites and heritages; visual research methodologies.
Research Project: “Curating Xunantunich: Conserving Ancient Maya Art and Architecture & Preserving Natural Heritage in an Urban Central Landscape of Western Central Belize”