Mariana Almaraz Reyes
International Research Training Group 'Temporalities of Future in Latin America'
Postdoctoral Fellow
Anthropology
Project: "Resonant Faces: Narrative Restoration and Cartographies of Care. Ceramic fragments from Mexico belonging to the Seler and Bauer Collection at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin"
14195 Berlin
Education
|
Since June 2025 |
Postdoctoral Researcher, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
|
05/2022 – 04/2025 |
PhD at the International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’ |
|
10/2018 – 10/2021 |
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin |
|
07/2008 – 07/2013 |
Bachelor of Arts in Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, National School of Restoration, Conservation and Museology (ENCRyM), "Manuel del Castillo Negrete", (INAH), Mexico City. |
Work experience
|
Since June 2025 |
Postdoctoral Researcher, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
|
05/2022 – 04/2025 |
Researcher, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’ |
|
01/2019 – 02/2022 |
Student Assistent, Prof. Dr.Ingrid Kummels, Freie Universität Berlin
|
|
09/2014-02/2017 |
Coordinator of the Conservation and Restoration Department. Textile Museum of Oaxaca (MTO), Oaxaca. |
|
10/2014-09/2016 |
Professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez Oaxaca (UABJO), Oaxaca. |
|
08/2013-08/2014 |
Restorer at the Coordinación Nacional de Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural (CNCPC) Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), Mexico City. |
Awards
| 11/2022 |
"Fray Bernardino de Sahagún Prize", National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), Mexico City Award for the best master thesis in cultural and social anthropology: “Tejiendo archivos lat(i)entes: Tensiones entre patrimonio cultural y memoria comunitaria, Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca”. |
| 10/2015 |
"Paul Coremans Prize", National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), Mexico City Award for the best thesis in conservation and restoration: “Study and conservation of a feathered textile: the mantle of San Miguel Zinacantepec, XVIII. Jhd”. |
| 09/2012 |
"Student Poster Award", International Institute for the Conservation of Historical and Artistic Works (IIC), 24th International Biennale of Decorative Arts, Vienna, Austria. |
Project: "Resonant Faces: Narrative Restoration and Cartographies of Care. Ceramic fragments from Mexico belonging to the Seler and Bauer Collection at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin"
Resonant Faces is a project that seeks to build bridges of collaboration between Mexico and Germany through research on heritage practices surrounding Mexican pre-Columbian collections housed at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. One of its main objectives is to explore how the temporalities of the future are negotiated in museum contexts far from the communities of origin. Through the concept of “narrative restoration,” it aims to reconstruct interrupted or silenced stories using critical mediation strategies that activate memories and open possibilities to imagine alternative futures for heritage.
The study focuses on two collections assembled by Wilhelm Bauer and by Eduard and Cäcilie Seler, with special attention to Cäcilie Seler-Sachs’s notes. Her sensitive and uncommon perspective for the time allows glimpses of forms of relationality that challenge the extractivist logic of collecting. From a situated perspective of “care,” understood as an ethical, affective, and political practice, a methodology is proposed based on performative cartographies of care and heritage imagination laboratories conceived as collaborative spaces where new narratives are activated through visual, sound, textual, and cartographic languages.
The content aims to reactivate links between objects and contemporary communities. This approach seeks not only to re-signify the past but also to open paths toward possible, multivocal, and reparative heritage futures, where imagination is consolidated as a methodological and political tool to transform relationships with collections in global contexts.
Keywords: future heritage, narrative restoration, care, dispersed collections, temporalities, multivocality, heritage activations, performative cartography, futurities.
Articles
Almaraz Reyes, Mariana (2022). "Contra-archivos texturizados. Irrumpiendo el archivo colonial, una mirada a las prácticas textiles contemporáneas en Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, México”, Antropología Experimental 22: 15-26. https://revistaselectronicas.ujaen.es/index.php/rae/article/view/6570/6624
Almaraz Reyes, Mariana, Lanzagorta Cumming, Ana and Lara Barrera, Emmanuel (2013). “IIC Vienna Congress 2012: la experiencia internacional de restauradores mexicanos en formación.” Intervención 7: 45-52. https://revistaintervencion.inah.gob.mx/index.php/intervencion/article/view/98
Almaraz Reyes, Mariana, Lanzagorta Cumming, A., & Lara Barrera, E. (2013). “IIC Vienna Congress 2012. Our Experience as Students”, News in Conservation, International Institute for Conservation 34: 6-8 https://www.iiconservation.org/system/files/publications/journal/2013/b2013_1.pdf
Chapters
Almaraz Reyes, Mariana (2014). "Estudio y conservación de un textil emplumado: El manto de San Miguel Zinacantepec del siglo XVIII". In: Conservación de arte plumario. Mexico City: INAH, CONACULTA, Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía. pp. 46-67 https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/repositorio/islandora/object/libro%3A526
