“If you ask a child to draw nature, they will draw a tree, but if you ask an Amazonian indigenous person, they will draw themselves, because they consider themselves part of nature,” says Claudi Carreras, curator of the exhibition. Amazon. The ancestral futurewhich opens today at the Center de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) until May 4, 2025.
With this, Carreras tries to explain the relationship of the inhabitants of the Amazon jungle basin with the environment where they live and that leads them to consider the animals in their environment as part of their family and the river itself as a stream of sacred water. that flows 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, which is based on what the artists who participate in it, all of them inhabitants of different parts of the country, can tell us. the extensive Amazon basin,” says the commissioner.
There is no single Amazon
In order to provide a demystifying approach to what the extensive Amazon region really is, Amazon. The ancestral future is committed to bringing us closer, through the works of some of its most notable artists, to a new way of seeing the mythical river and its diverse ecosystems.
The works aim 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 documentary filmmaker Andrés Cardona, who has various contributions to the exhibition in video format.
Cardona argues that the concept of “virgin forest” implies “a territory with immense riches that ask to be exploited by Westerners, of course without the permission of those who live on the land and have done so sustainably for thousands of years.”
Both Cardona and Carreras emphasize 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, despite speaking different languages, remain interconnected. in a sustainable way of life.
“These are discreet civilizations, which do not build great monuments to wealth and power as we do,” says Carreras, who assures that they have not been any 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, 60% of them in urban areas and the other 40% spread across more than 400 tribes that speak more than 300 languages.” different”.
Carrera also highlights that in this vast territory, shared by nine countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, French Guyana, and Peru), different ethnic groups coexist, in addition to urban, rural and jungle environments. , “not only indigenous, but we must also include mestizos, Europeans, people of African descent,” etc. Hence the exhibition refers to the various “Amazons” and not to a single “Amazon”.
An ecosystem on the limit
The director of the center has reasoned that this is the reason why Amazon. The ancestral future It aims 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,” Carrera emphasizes in reference to an event in which states will decide on aspects that affect the Amazon region and its inhabitants.
The indigenous painter Rember Yahuarcaniborn in Peru and with numerous works in art centers around the world, explains the feelings of the Amazonian inhabitants regarding climate summits: “We indigenous people do not have a voice, there are always others who speak for us and decide what concerns us.” to the land where we live and which is more degraded every day.” Yahuarcani, who brings to the exhibition a large mural painted with acrylic on canvas, assures that exhibitions like this one serve to give them a voice.
For her part, the Brazilian journalist and writer Eliane Brum, a great disseminator of the Amazonian cultural and biological wealth and activist against the climate crisis, has warned that the region is reaching a point of no return in terms of its degradation. “The level of degradation of the forest is currently 18% and experts warn that if it reaches 20%, there will be no possibility of reversing the damage to the ecosystem.”
Brum has highlighted the importance of the Amazon rainforest as “one of the lungs of the earth”, in reference to its great capacity to absorb carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere and, therefore, cushion global warming.
The woman as the 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 financial decision centers to the periphery, is also responsible for a series of conferences on “the violence exerted on women’s bodies by men.” “They themselves want to exploit the ecosystem for their benefit.”
The first of them will have as its protagonist the 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 by metal seekers (garimpeiros).
A second debate will be led by climate activist Patricia Gualinga; a third by the indigenous youth leader Txai Suruí and finally in the fourth presentation Eduardo Neves will be present, who will dismantle existing myths about the alleged wild virginity of the territory and will relate the numerous evidence that the region has been home to numerous civilizations for thousands of years before the arrival of the Spanish and the Portuguese.
Ayahuasca murals and songs
Amazon. The ancestral future It is a dense exhibition, which accumulates concepts and data and mixes them with numerous works of art that try to show us the spirit of the different peoples that inhabit the region. There are some conceptual installations and there is an abundance of photographic, pictorial and silk-screen 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 that will change color as the exhibition progresses,” explains Claudi Carreras.
The curator also refers to the murals that are at the beginning of the route and that have been painted by the collective of the Brazilian artist Iba Sales Huni-Kuin and by the Amazonian artists born in Peru Olinda Silvano and Cordelia Sánchez. “These types of murals are made when you have a dream on an ayahuasca trip in response to the shaman’s singing,” Carreras explains.
Normally, when ayahuasca is taken ritually, the shaman plays religious songs to accompany the trip; When a vision or dream comes to mind, the artist gets up and paints a mural inspired by the dream 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 are seen during an ayahuasca trip.
For the occasion, the aforementioned artists have painted on site their murals, but Carreras clarifies that they have not done it under the effects of ayahuasca. However, ancestral songs have been played during the making of the murals. It was Iba Sales Huni-Kuin who recovered them along with his group, saving them from oblivion.
“Iba’s first song is of permission, the second of admiration for the richness of nature and the third is of healing,” explains Carreras, who explains that the artist believes that we are sick as a society and we need to stop our frenetic pace for a while. moments and reflect.
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 that would be close to the concept of a temple that monotheistic religions have. In the maloca, people gather to talk, to learn about ritual herbs such as tobacco, coca, ayahuasca or sweet yucca, and to heal and connect with nature.
It has been built by Emilio Fiagama, “maloquero” [una suerte de sacerdote o médico ritual] and indigenous leader born in Colombia. He has made it with remains of branches and trees burned by deforestation to raise awareness of the problem of fires. “The object is to serve as a starting point to unlearn our Western vision of the Amazon and dialogue to establish the correct vision,” says Carreras. The documentary filmmaker Andrés Cardona has placed 29 videos of the interviews carried out for the exhibition inside.
Amazon. The ancestral future It closes with its darkest and least hopeful approach: that of the extractive voracity that looms over the Amazon. Thus, various artistic installations, especially photographs, tell of the evils that plague the territory: mining, deforestation, livestock or extensive agriculture.
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