San Sebastian,
After passing through the Center de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona two years ago, a large thematic exhibition dedicated to the Amazon has arrived at San Telmo Museoa (San Sebastián). “Amazons. The ancestral future” highlights the natural and cultural wealth of that vast region, which crosses up to nine countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana) and is home to thirty million people, including four hundred indigenous peoples who express themselves in a close number of languages: three hundred.
The environmental balance far beyond the borders of this area depends on the survival of this diversity in what is the largest tropical ecosystem on the planet and also its main water reserve, which is why the San Sebastian museum wanted to integrate here the voices of native intellectuals and artists who propose to articulate other ways of understanding the Amazon and relating to nature as a whole. They are reviewed, favoring sensory experiences, smells, sounds, rituals and the daily life of those who live in and around the jungle; realizes the main threats that threaten it with the help of scientists and researchers (starting with deforestation and continuing with drought, fires and fights for control of raw materials); and the value of the ancestral wisdom of the people who have their origins in this place is vindicated, very aware of the fragility of their environment and the vital need to respect it.
The exhibition, curated by the curator and editor of documentary photography in the Ibero-American field, Claudi Carreras, begins, remembering that the Amazon was not a virgin forest before Western powers settled in these areas, despite the extraordinary diffusion of the idea of this region as a paradise foreign to civilization and, therefore, susceptible to being exploited. Some populations have lived for millennia in these territories (up to 13,000 years, according to some experts) and without their connections with this ecosystem it would be impossible to understand the current reality of the place, more similar – according to the exhibition, and because of these interactions – to a large garden than to an immaculate Eden.
In the first section of the route, The message of the rootswe will learn about plants and materials used in different ceremonial or healing rites, murals made specifically for this exhibition by indigenous creators, and even the recreation of a maloca: a space of knowledge that has been reconstructed here very faithfully.
Another misleading idea, refuted in the second section of the project, is that of a theoretical homogeneity of the territory and its inhabitants: in the 7,000 kilometers through which the Amazon runs from its Andean source to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean, very diverse landscapes and inhabitants whose origins are equally diverse come our way. Some descend from the earliest inhabitants of the region, and have inherited to a greater or lesser extent their knowledge accumulated over the centuries, while others are offspring of the migratory waves that have landed here, that is, of Afro-descendant peoples, ribeirinhos and settlers. Both share vital horizons that will necessarily have to be sustainable with what is their home and, often, their livelihood.
At the San Telmo Museoa we can listen to their sounds and music, be aware of the heritage that their languages represent and also learn about some of the representations of the Amazon that have historically been formulated, inside and outside of art.
This exhibition proposes, as we advanced, that the contrast of the notion of civilization to the ways of life of those who have always lived here has generated a legitimization of certain forms of violence associated with the exploitation of natural resources. The wide profit margins of many companies, not only logging companies, have had the reverse of the devastation of certain areas of the jungle and several forced population movements. Some members of these communities, or leaders in the defense of nature, have been murdered for their frontal opposition to these operations.
Past and recent extractivism in the Amazon is reflected through historical documents, audiovisuals and photographs that collect valuable testimonies from the victims of deforestation.
A final chapter of the show, We are a fabricemphasizes how many jungle populations have in common the use of plants with hallucinogenic properties to connect with their ancestors and also with supposed spirits of the forest, present in it as well as its visible plants, which would provide them with advice for survival, only possible by ensuring the maintenance of the interdependence between humans and animal and plant species.
Faced with a Western concept of progress based on increasing linearity and the use of nature for their own benefit, the native populations of the Amazon seek not to distance themselves from it, as their ancestors did not do. A pictorial mural, audiovisuals and scientific resources will try to demonstrate that the consequences of mistreatment of this planetary lung can be global and ferocious.
Half a dozen proposals have been developed specifically for this occasion: the installation Gods and spirits of the nation uitotoby Nereyda López and Santiago Yahuarcani, about the connections of the spirits of the jungle with life in it, based on natural sculptures from the second artist’s family; acrylic painting on wood Kene. The knowledge of piri piriby Olinda Silvano, a tribute to the identity, patterns and inks of the town shipibo-konibo from Peru; another triad of pieces in acrylic on fabric, dedicated to medicinal plants, by the MAHKU collective, based on indigenous lands in the Brazilian state of Acre; a handmade painting by Elías Mamallacta, made with honey and natural pigments according to tradition Kichwa; acrylic on canvas and wall by Rember Yahuarcani Healing and illustrated healinga tribute to ancestral cultures; and the aforementioned malokaby Andrés Cardona and Emilio Fiagama. They have conceived it as a representation of the world, as a space to strengthen customs and traditions and teach teachings about medicinal herbs.
The presentation of “Amazonias. The ancestral future” in San Sebastián is completed with guided tours and activities for all audiences.
“Amazons. The ancestral future”
SAN TELMO MUSEUM
Plaza Zuloaga, 1
San Sebastian
From October 31, 2025 to April 12, 2026
