Amazons

The exhibition takes a collective look at Amazonian culture and highlights indigenous voices that through art, thinking, science and activism propose other ways of living, growing and relating to nature.

Amazonia is vast in its extension and diversity: it crosses nine states where over 30 million people live, 60% in urban areas. The region is also the original habitat of some 400 indigenous peoples who speak over 300 different languages. The temperature of the planet and climate change depend on the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest tropical ecosystem.

Amazons. The Ancestral Future is a sensory journey through the immensity of rivers and forests, through the sounds, smells, cities, rituals, people and life stories of Amazonian communities. Today, this vast cultural and natural wealth is affected by deforestation, fires, drought and struggles for the control of raw materials, conflicts that the exhibition addresses with the help of the region’s leading scientists and researchers.

Far from offering a folkloric or fatalistic view of life in Amazonia, the exhibition defends the connection and the profound knowledge that its peoples have of nature and their ancestors. Amazonias. The Ancestral Future not only speaks of a valuable culture and ecosystem; it also makes us think about ourselves as a society, about the fragility of our environment, and about the urgent need to recover more respectful ways of living.

The exhibition is a unique opportunity to enjoy new work that has been specially commissioned from outstanding artists and indigenous groups, like the impressive murals painted on site in Barcelona by the MAHKU collective (Huni Kuin, Brazil), Rember Yahuarcani (Uitoto, Peru), Elías Mamallacta (Kichwa, Ecuador), and Olinda Silvano and Cordelia Sánchez (Shipibo-konibo, Peru), photographs and audiovisual montages by Andrés Cardona, and an artistic installation by Santiago Yahuarcani and Nereyda López (Uitoto, Peru).

Curated by Claudi Carreras, the exhibition also has the collaboration of local experts such as Jõao Paulo Lima Barreto, Eliane Brum, Emilio Fiagama, Lilian Fraiji, Valério Gomes, Nelly Kuiru, Eduardo Góes Neves, Daiara Tukano, Rember Yahuarcani and Joseph Zárate, and the participation of the Bioacoustics Applications Laboratory of the UPC, Ernesto Ventós Foundation and VIST Foundation.