“If you ask a child to draw nature, he will draw a tree, but if you ask an Amazonian indigenous person, he will draw himself, because he considers himself part of nature,” explains Claudi Carreras, curator. of the exhibition. Amazon. The ancestral futurewhich opens its doors today at the Center de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) until May 4, 2025.
Carreras thus attempts to explain the relationship of the inhabitants of the Amazon jungle basin with the environment in which they live and this leads them to consider the animals in their environment as part of their family and the river itself as a stream of sacred water. which arises from divinity.
“This exhibition is designed so that we can unlearn everything we think we know about the Amazon and relearn it in the correct way, based on what the participating artists, all from different parts of the country, can do. tell us the vast Amazon basin,” says the commissioner.
There is no single Amazon
In order to offer a demystifying approach to what the vast Amazon region really is, Amazon. The ancestral future is committed to bringing us closer, through the works of some of its most remarkable artists, to a new way of seeing the mythical river and its diverse ecosystems.
The works are intended to be the eyes through which to look at a territory as vast as it is complex and mythologized. “For 500 years, the very name of the Amazon region as virgin forest already represents the first act of desecration and exploitation,” says Colombian photographer and documentarian Andrés Cardona, who has various contributions to the exhibition in video form.
Cardona argues that the concept of “virgin forest” implies “a territory endowed with immense wealth which begs to be exploited by Westerners, of course without the permission of those who live on this land and have done so sustainably for thousands of years.” ‘years “.
Cardona and Carreras point out that, according to archaeologist Eduardo Neves, who has worked all his life in excavations in the Amazon, the region has been inhabited for more than 13,000 years by numerous tribes who, although they speak different languages, remain interconnected. sustainable lifestyle.
“They are discreet civilizations, which do not build great monuments of wealth and power like us,” says Carreras, who assures that they were no less rich in social complexity. For her part, Judit Carrera, director of the CCCB, explains that “30 million people currently live in the Amazon region, including 60% in urban areas and the remaining 40% distributed among more than 400 tribes who speak more than 300 languages. ” different”.
Carrera also points out that in this vast territory shared by nine countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Peru), different ethnic groups coexist, in addition to urban, rural and jungle environments. , “not only indigenous people, but we must also include mixed-race people, Europeans, people of African descent”, etc. The exhibition therefore refers to the different “Amazons” and not to a single “Amazon”.
An ecosystem at the limit
The director of the center believed that this was the reason why Amazon. The ancestral future It is intended to be a respectful look at this complex network of ecosystems. “It is no coincidence that we inaugurate the exhibition two days after the start of COP29 in Azerbaijan,” emphasizes Carrera in reference to an event during which states will decide on aspects that affect the Amazon region and its inhabitants.
Indigenous painter Rember Yahuarcani, born in Peru and with numerous works in art centers around the world, explains the feelings of Amazonian residents in the face of climate peaks: “We, the indigenous people, have no voice, there is there are always others who speak for us and “They decide what concerns the land where we live and what is more degraded every day.” Yahuarcani, who brings to the exhibition a large fresco painted in acrylic on canvas, assures that exhibitions like this serve to give them a voice.
For her part, Brazilian journalist and writer Eliane Brum, a great disseminator of Amazonian cultural and biological wealth and activist against the climate crisis, warned that the region is reaching a point of no return in terms of degradation. “The level of forest degradation is currently 18% and experts warn that if it reaches 20%, there will be no possibility of repairing the damage caused to the ecosystem. »
Brum highlighted the importance of the Amazon rainforest as “one of the lungs of the earth”, referring to its great capacity to absorb carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere and, therefore, to cushion global warming.
The woman as protagonist of Amazonica
The author of The Amazon: Journey to the center of the world (Salamandra, 2024), which claims to place natural ecosystems at the center of our society and move the centers of financial decision-making to the periphery, is also at the origin of a series of conferences on “violence exerted on women’s bodies by men.” want to exploit the ecosystem for their own benefit. »
The first of these will feature activist Ehuana Yaira Ianomami, who will discuss the situation of the Yanomami people, threatened by mining interests and whose women are subjected to sexual violence at the hands of metal seekers (garimpeiros).
A second debate will be moderated by climate activist Patricia Gualinga; a third by the indigenous youth leader Txai Suruí and finally in the fourth presentation will be present Eduardo Neves, who will dismantle the existing myths about the supposed wild virginity of the territory and will recount the numerous proofs that the region has been home to numerous civilizations for thousands years before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese.
Murals and Ayahuasca chants
Amazon. The ancestral future This is a dense exhibition, accumulating concepts and data and mixing them with numerous artworks that attempt to show us the spirit of the different peoples who inhabit the region. There are some conceptual installations and an abundance of photographic, painterly and screen-printed works.
In addition to the mural by Rember Yahuarcani, it is worth highlighting another large-format mural by the Ecuadorian painter Elias Mamallacta. “It is painted with ayahuasca dye and some other natural Amazonian pigments which will change color with exposure,” explains Claudi Carreras.
The curator also refers to the murals at the beginning of the route, which were painted by the collective of Brazilian artist Iba Sales Huni-Kuin and by Peruvian-born Amazonian artists Olinda Silvano and Cordelia Sánchez. “These type of murals are made when you dream on an ayahuasca journey in response to the shaman’s song,” Carreras explains.
Normally, when ayahuasca is consumed ritually, the shaman plays religious songs to accompany the journey; When a vision or dream comes to mind, the artist gets up and paints a dream-inspired mural to the rhythm of the song,” he reveals. Regarding the abundance of acid colors used, he explains that they respond to the color palette in which hallucinations manifest during an ayahuasca trip.
For the occasion, the aforementioned artists painted on site their murals, but Carreras clarifies that they did not do so under the effects of ayahuasca. However, ancestral songs were played during the creation of the murals. It was Iba Sales Huni-Kuin who recovered them with his group, thus saving them from oblivion.
“Iba’s first song is of permission, the second of admiration for the richness of nature and the third of healing,” says Carreras, who explains that the artist believes that we are sick as a society and that we We need to stop our frenetic pace for a moment and think.
A maloca to unlearn
On the other hand, it is worth highlighting the presence in the exhibition of a “maloca”, a sacred and ritual house which would be close to the concept of temple that monotheistic religions have. In maloca, people come together to talk, to learn about ritual herbs like tobacco, coca, ayahuasca or sweet yucca, to heal themselves and connect with nature.
It was built by Emilio Fiagama, “maloquero” [una suerte de sacerdote o médico ritual] and indigenous leader born in Colombia. He made it with remains of branches and trees burned by deforestation to raise awareness of the problem of fires. “The goal is to serve as a starting point to unlearn our Western view of the Amazon and to dialogue to establish the correct view,” says Carreras. The documentarian Andrés Cardona has placed inside 29 videos of the interviews carried out for the exhibition.
Amazon. The ancestral future It ends with its darkest and least hopeful approach: that of the extractive voracity that threatens the Amazon. Thus, various artistic installations, notably photographs, tell the story of the ills that plague the territory: mining, deforestation, livestock breeding or extensive agriculture.
