By Álvaro de Benito
Madrid's CentroCentro approaches the artistic production related to the Amazon with the exhibition Tropico sin tópico: Amazonas (Tropic without Topic: Amazon), curated by Halim Badawi (Barranquilla, Colombia, 1982), and with which it intends to facilitate new looks beyond the usual ones with which the European imaginary contemplates the indigenous legacy and its relation with the contemporary world.
The exhibition features the participation of twenty-five Ibero-American artists who, with their proposals covering techniques such as textile art, photography, sculpture, painting and engraving, try to revert the idealized, distant and aseptic image of the Amazonian indigenous legacy to delve into the political and social problems suffered by these communities.
Within the social section, the exhibition navigates in the difficult balance of the look of the political narratives built from the distance of the purely ethnographic idiosyncrasy, especially in the vision of the traditional, although it has a notable impact on the work of demystification, closer to the thread of the thesis, and the debate on the limits of art and crafts and the productive vision of the same. In addition, the exhibition's line of argument also builds on the aspects of understanding and collaboration once the clichés have been overcome, of coexistence and of the implementation of policies that allow for the construction of that common future.
Trópico sin tópico: Amazonas includes Works from Alberto Baraya (Spain and Colombia), José Luis 'Bongore' (Spain and France), Francisco Antonio Cano (Colombia), Antonio Caro (Colombia), Carlos Castro (United States and Colombia), Camilo Egas (Ecuador), Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (Venezuela), Manuel Herreros de Lemos (Spain and Venezuela), Marlenne Hoffmann (Colombia), Theodor Koch-Grünberg (Germany), Andrés Matías Pinilla (Colombia and Argentina) are participating, 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), Tikuna people (South America), Aimema Úai (Colombia).
Trópico sin tópico: Amazonas can be seen until June 22 at CentroCentro, Plaza de Cibeles, 1, Madrid (Spain).