Amazonias

“Amazonias. The Ancestral Future" addresses the strategic importance of the preservation of the Amazon region at a global level. It presents the latest scientific and archaeological studies that question many of the traditional paradigms and present proven evidence of the relevance of Amazonia’s ecosystems for preserving our world and fighting the current climate crisis. These studies show that more than 50% of the Amazon is not a primary forest, but an induced landscape. Indigenous peoples and local communities have forged the forest landscapes throughout the region, interacted with their ecosystems for thousands of years and, in some cases, have formed the composition of the forest species to adapt them to their needs.

But far from being a fatalistic exhibition about the current complex situation of the region, the exhibition seeks to stimulate and raise awareness among visitors regarding the importance of preserving the world’s largest rainforest ecosystem, and it presents a journey through different projects and works by creators from the region who, from different practices, will address the great challenges of the Amazon today.

The exhibition proposes a fully immersive itinerary that enables visitors to listen to the sounds of the rainforest thanks to the latest sound research, and enter into new universes specially designed for the CCCB's installations by creators from local communities. Hand in hand with leading scientists and researchers in the region, visitors will be able to discover the keys to the challenges that the preservation of the Amazon ecosystem poses. The need to establish international protection mechanisms that help Amazonian countries to establish sustainable and balanced development policies is one of the other fundamental themes of a discourse that calls upon us all.

"Amazonias. The Ancestral Future" presents a new timeline and epistemology of the region; bringing the visitor closer to spaces of great symbolic value in the territory, such as the maloca, understood as the place of the word, where the immense diversity of languages present in the Pan-Amazon region, a plural universe at risk of disappearing, will be explained.

Indigenous worldviews will be present in a transversal way throughout the exhibition, through various artistic creations expressly commissioned from various indigenous artists and collectives who will be working in situ in Barcelona: MAHKU (Brazil - Huni Kuin), Rember Yahuarcani (Peru - Witoto), Santiago Yahuarcani and Nereyda López (Peru - Witoto), Elías Mamallacta (Ecuador - Kichwa) and Olinda Silvano (Peru – Shipibo-Conibo).

To understand the Amazon, it is also necessary to be familiar with the functioning of the global ecosystem, with the region’s importance in how water functions around the planet, and with the impact of global warming, the absorption of CO2 and the role of biodiversity.

The exhibition is conceived as a space for dialogue between indigenous wisdom and the latest scientific developments, under the urgency of consolidating a decolonial narrative and laying the foundations for articulating the rights of non-human entities.

Curator: Claudi Carreras
With the collaboration of Jõao Paulo Barreto, Eliane Brum, Andrés Cardona, Emilio Fiagama, Lilian Fraiji, Valério Gomes, Nelly Kuiru, Eduardo Neves, Daiara Tukano, Rember Yahuarcani and Joseph Zárate, and the participation of the UPC Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics