Vegetation and culture: the ancestral future of the Amazon

Barcelona,

After proposing to reflect on the past and present of the American dream, the Center de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona escapes from the urban to dedicate its next major thematic exhibition to the Amazon. “Amazons. The ancestral future” will emphasize the natural and cultural wealth of that vast region that crosses no less than nine countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana) and is home to thirty million of people, among them four hundred indigenous peoples who express themselves in practically the same 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 CCCB wanted to add the voices of intellectuals here. and artists from the region who invite us to articulate other ways of understanding the Amazon and relating to nature as a whole. They are reviewed, favoring the sensory experiences, the smells, sounds, rituals and daily life of those who live in and around the jungle; The main threats that threaten it are reviewed by scientists and researchers (starting with deforestation and continuing with drought, fires and conflicts over the control of raw materials) and the value of the ancestral wisdom of the peoples who have their roots in this place, perfectly 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 the 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. Certain populations have lived for millennia in these territories (up to 13,000 years, according to some scholars) and without their connections with this ecosystem it would be impossible to understand the current reality of the place, which is 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 tour, The Message of the Roots, we will see plants and materials used in different ceremonial or healing rites, murals made specifically for this center by indigenous creators, and including 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 this project, is that of a supposed homogeneity of the territory and its inhabitants: in the 7,000 kilometers through which the Amazon runs from its source in the Andes to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean, We contemplate very diverse territories and inhabitants whose origins are also diverse. Some descend from the original 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 different 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.

In Barcelona we will be able to listen to their sounds and music, be aware of the richness 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.

Lalo de Almeida, Munduruku protest in Belo Monte, 2013. Courtesy of the artist

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 given rise to a legitimization of certain forms of violence associated with the exploitation of natural resources. The wide profit margins of many companies, not just logging companies, have had the reverse of the devastation of certain areas of the jungle and several forced population movements. Several 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.

Rember Yahuarcani, Those Other Worlds, 2024. Courtesy of the artist

A final chapter of the show, We are a fabricremembers 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 much as its visible plants, which would provide them with advice for survival, only possible It is 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 undo their ties with 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 the exhibition: the installation Gods and spirits of the uitoto nationby 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 Shipibo-Konibo people of 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 the Kichwa tradition; 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, a space to strengthen customs and traditions and teach teachings about medicinal plants.