TRÓPICO SIN TÓPICO: AMAZONAS

Description

TRÓPICO SIN TÓPICO: AMAZONAS

Trópico sin tópico: Amazonas proposes a shift in the way we understand the indigenous legacy and its relationship with the contemporary world. Through the ages, indigenous cultures have been interpreted from an idealised perspective, as a source of inspiration for Western art, or from stereotypes that present them as holding all the answers to the global crisis.

This exhibition of works by Latin American artists seeks to break away from these reductionist views and to explore the political, social and cultural tensions that these territories and communities are undergoing. From the devastation caused by the rubber genocide to the colonisation of indigenous imaginaries with Judeo-Christian and extractivist elements, the exhibition highlights how indigenous communities are not immune from the contradictions of the contemporary world.

Artists such as Julieth Morales question the exclusion of the female body, while other participants raise the banner for indigenous leaders such as Manuel Quintín Lame, who symbolises the struggle of marginalised communities. The exhibition also seeks to destroy the myths surrounding the traditional categories of art which limit indigenous creativity to handicrafts or decoration.

The title of the exhibition invites us to rise above the clichés about American jungles and to imagine a future in which species can live together and dialogue with one another on the basis of equality and sustainability. The exhibition leads us to reflect on the need to build a kinder and fairer world for all forms of life.

The exhibition features the following artists:

- Alberto Baraya (Spain and Colombia)
- José Luis 'Bongore' (Spain and France)
- Francisco Antonio Cano (Colombia)
- Antonio Caro (Colombia)
- Carlos Castro (USA and Colombia)
- Camilo Egas (Ecuador)
- Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (Venezuela)
- Manuel Herreros de Lemos (Spain and Venezuela)
- Marlenne Hoffmann (Colombia)
- Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Germany)
- Andrés Matías Pinilla (Colombia and Argentina)
- Manu Mojito (Colombia)
- Julieth Morales (Colombia)
- Delcy Morelos (Colombia)
- Eduard Moreno (Colombia)
- Marco Ospina (Colombia)
- Andrés Orjuela (Mexico and Colombia)
- Manuel Quintín Lame (Colombia)
- Amalia Ramírez de Ordóñez (Colombia)
- Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (Austria and Colombia)
- José Alejandro Restrepo (Colombia)
- Abel Rodríguez (Colombia)
- Olinda Silvano (Peru)
- Pueblo Tikuna (South America)
- Aimema Úai (Colombia)

Halim Badawi (Colombia, 1982, currently living in Madrid) has curated this exhibition.
A critic and curator specialising in 19th- and 20th-century Colombian and Latin American art, particularly the history of collecting, artists’ archives, itinerant painters in Latin America and the origins of modern art, subjects on which he has written or co-written around 300 articles and essays.

He is the author of the book "Urgent History of Art in Colombia" (Historia urgente del arte en Colombia) (Bogotá: Crítica, 2019). From 2013 to 2019 he was a regular contributor to the magazine Arcadia (Bogotá). He has published essays in Babelia (Madrid), El País (Madrid), Frieze (London), Credencial (Bogotá), Artecontexto (Madrid) and columns for Diario Criterio (Bogotá). As a curator, he has organised exhibitions that examine the influence the scientist Alexander von Humboldt has had on art: he has published two books and curated three exhibitions on the subject (in 2016 and 2019) for the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the National University of Colombia and the Alzate Avendaño Foundation in Bogotá.

He is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for the Arts of the Banco de la República, in Bogotá; a consultant for the Museum of the Americas, in Madrid, and artistic director and co-founder of the Arkhé Archive, in Madrid, an association dedicated to the rescue, conservation and dissemination of LGBTI+ history and Latin American art.

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