When Glicéria Tupinambá, an Indigenous Brazilian artist, first visited the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, she had an encounter that would change her life.

It was 2018 and museum officials had invited Glicéria — a member of the Tupinambá people — to see a mantle, or feathered cape, that her ancestors had made hundreds of years ago. Glicéria expected to simply study the artifact, she recalled in a recent interview. But upon seeing its plumage, she said, she started experiencing spectacular visions.

“Suddenly, I see myself facing an ancestor,” Glicéria recalled, “and this ancestor shows me images from the past, and speaks to me with this vast and female energy.”

Glicéria set out to learn everything she could about the capes, including how to make them herself. She also started a “treasure hunt,” to find other mantels that Europeans had obtained from her homeland, so that she could commune with them and, potentially, take some back to the Tupinambá in Bahia, Brazil.

For much of the past decade, restitution — the idea that Western museums should return contested artifacts to their countries of origin — has been a major topic of debate among museum administrators, lawmakers and activists. And while artists’ voices have not been as loud in those discussions, Glicéria is among several at this year’s Venice Biennale, the international art exhibition that runs through Nov. 24, showing work that draws focus to the issue.