Traces, Crafts, and Territories proposes an interdisciplinary intersection between Plastic Arts, Biology, and Feminists Studies, aiming to generate new interpretations of the set of cave paintings in the rocks of Cerro Azul and Nuevo Tolima. These are archaeological sites located in the department of Guaviare, Colombia, which could be between 5,000 and 12,000 years old. Among geometries, vegetation, animals, and amorphous figures, these images cover some of the rocky shelters that compose this magnificent stone formation known as the Serranía de la Lindosa.
In a collective observation exercise, a tangle of concepts, visual similarities, and debates began to weave together, and from which speculative interpretations emerged about this territory. Hence, connections began to develop between the material conditions of the Serranía, as its vegetation—particularly the moriche palm—and the crafts made by those communities that inhabit or inhabited the territory of Guaviare. Subsequently, placing these series of reflections in conversation with some of the modern and contemporary artworks of MAMBO’s extensive collection.
From this dialogue, we propose to dislocate vertical and horizontal axes to carefully distribute the set of selected works, arranging the paintings, drawings, and graphic works on tables and showcases as study elements, creating a rupture to the solemn pictorial tradition and its representation. Likewise, the photographs of the pictograms, and the poetic documentation on the body, were elevated as two-dimensional pieces evoking the viewer’s reflection.
This gaze towards the paintings of Cerro Azul and Nuevo Tolima, in the light of a cross-reference, reveals its validity and timeliness and simultaneously provokes a constellation of legible formal relationships in the patterns rescued in the rocks or the Serrania’s vegetation. The panels’ geometric figures are strangely similar to the fibers intersecting, a product of the craft of basketry or the weaving of indigenous communities settled in the territory. In the rocks and the weave, the rhythm of the interlaced red lines reflect the cellular structures of moriche palms captured in biology laboratories. These same geometric patterns appear in aerial photographs of the territory and recall the sculptures, prints, and paintings that rest in MAMBO’s collection.
This exhibition does not intend to reveal absolute truths about the cave paintings that lie enigmatic between the Orinoquía and the Amazon jungle of present-day Colombia. However, it is more a proposal or a provocation for those who explore the exhibition to speculate, generate questions, and thus begin to be part of this fabric of images, objects, and experiences that we present here.
Rosario López
Profesora Asociada
Facultad de Artes
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
The Collection on Stage is a space for curatorial investigation and experimentation that aims to create interdisciplinary, alternative, and innovative narratives of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá - MAMBO. These series of exhibitions seek to question, analyze, and democratize the forms in which content is produced and circulates in the Museum to offer new interpretations, readings, juxtapositions, connections, and queries between the works and the public.
For this edition, MAMBO invited Colombian artist Rosario López to propose a curatorial exercise from her vision and artistic practice, creating a dialogue between the works of the Museum’s collection with her recent research on landscape, nature, and territory. The exhibition presents a visual symphony of objects and images that exist individually and that together compose a concert of visual and conceptual associations.
Germán Escobar
Junior Curator
MAMBO
BIOGRAPHY
Plastic artist and researcher in areas related to landscape and territory. She uses photography to record the entropic forces that modify nature and produces changes of thinking on these phenomena with the construction of sculptural and installation objects that she places in the museum’s space. Associate Professor of the School of Plastic and Visual Arts of the Faculty of Arts of the National University of Colombia, from 1999 to date.
The patterns that humans observe in nature help us describe phenomenons, organize our thoughts, and classify and understand how the world functions. The visual parallels between microscopic structures and macroscopic patterns are a new universe, revealing unexpected similarities of traditional forms that exist everywhere. The beauty of nature and its knowledge make it possible for us to discern how forms and structures are related and create magnificent symmetric patterns—standard, similar, but finally unique. The fight between ordinary creation and chance. The balance between the homogenous and the diverse. Why and how these patterns occur has driven much of my thinking as a scientist. Furthermore, the search for explanations to many natural phenomena. The microscopic images reveal forms that we also find in landscapes (natural expressions) and art (cultural expressions). In the journey of this chosen path in life, exploring and searching for natural patterns, we encountered a team of artists who also seek and analyze patterns from another perspective. The exhibition’s visual manifestation highlights many natural and artistic expressions of past traces and present encounters. These traces have joined to bring us this exhibition of something that shows how incredibly detailed and beautiful the patterns are and how, if we look, we find.
Dolors Armenteras
Profesora Titular
Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
The approach from Feminist Studies has allowed tracing how artisanal textiles are made and especially textile gestures in this work; they can materially create a commitment to environmentally affected territories through the connection of what seems distant. By accompanying Rosario López and her team’s work, we have identified partial connections between wool or fique yarn used to tie backpacks in Pueblo Bello, César; the palm braiding in the Amazon region; and the knitting of monumental pieces made in Bogota, present in this exhibition. Particular bodies incarnate each of these textile gestures. The patterns they generate and their manufacturing have allowed them to understand, materially, their relation to the world they belong to and the links that potentially exist between them.
From this feminist approach to materiality, we have observed how these partial connections guide the visual, sculptural, collaborative, and transdisciplinary work of the artist Rosario López in San José del Guaviare. Particularly her interest in re-evaluating the landscape affected by conflict and environmental degradation. It has been interesting to accompany the dialogues she promotes generously between communities of knowledge: indigenous communities that live in protected areas, ecologists that study the patterns of degradation/reforestation, artists that understand the poetic forms in the landscape. These dialogues, which are coincidentally gendered, inspire a compositional and performative minimalist art and, at its core, the exploration of textile materials.
Tania Pérez-Bustos
Profesora Asociada
Escuela de Estudios de Género
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
The exhibition display of the works in MAMBO’s collection and its distribution on tables —terraces—arises from the encounter with the lithograph Composición IX by Serge Poliakoff (Russia, 1906 - France, 1969). In this image, we find a relationship between the aerial photographs taken by the Fundación para el Desarrollo Sostenible (Foundation for Sustainable Development) in the Guaviare department and the Colombian Orinoquía. These photographs have helped us to imagine a territory that, however distant it may seem, draws a series of patterns that may be natural or created by human presence, demonstrating that some limits can be explored and experimented. These terraces invite the visitor to navigate this newly configured space in the Museum as if it was a smaller scale of the observed territories, which currently demand urgent care due to their transformation and indiscriminate appropriation.
CIRCULARITY
We are aware of the void when we discover the limits that it traces. In this set of pieces, the emphasis on circularity, as a repeating pattern composing a structure, is surprising. The cells observed in the photomicrographs of the moriche palm (Mauritia flexuosa) have a volume and a thickness. Likewise, the sculpture by Feliza Bursztyn (Colombia, 1933– France, 1982) is a drawing that lifts and recreates a fabric from the repetition of circular elements. In this provocation, we intuit that the pictograms of the panels of Cerro Azul and Nuevo Tolima, as well as the other objects arranged on the table, evoke that frequent circularity that encloses the void—also present in the work of Lucio Fontana (Argentina, 1899- Italy, 1968).
1. Feliza Bursztyn (Colombia, 1933-1982)
Sin título, de la Serie Encajes de Bruselas, 1970
Acero inoxidable
Colección MAMBO
2. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
3. Petiole tissue of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope (cross section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia
4. Mesay, Chiribiquete National Natural Park. 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible
5. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
6. Lucio Fontana (Argentina, 1899-1968)
Sin título, s.F.
Aguafuerte e intaglio
Colección MAMBO
7. Root tissue of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope (cross section). 2020
Histología
8. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
TERRITORY
We organized this terrace based on the elevated pictograms on Nuevo Tolima’s panel in the Guaviare, perceiving a relation to the territory’s notions and the geographic spatial distribution. For the indigenous communities of Tukano-Oriental, these diagrams—as abstract as they may seem from a western perspective—indicate the appropriation and recognition of their territories. When juxtaposing this information with the aerial photographs taken in this region of the country, we observe an accelerated transformation of these protected areas. The patterns seen from the air correspond to the burning and deforestation practices that threaten this same ecosystem. These artificial patterns, resulting from the human presence, resemble the natural forms found in the moriche palm’s histologies (Mauritia flexuosa). This natural species has inhabited this area for more than 5,000 years. Similarly, it’s interesting to highlight how art has incorporated the use of patterns as another of its multiple strategies for the construction of images.
9. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
10. Jean Arp (Alemania, 1886-1966)
Sin título (original para la revista XXe siècle). 1959
Xilografía
Colección MAMBO
11. Petiole tissue of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope with blue staining (cross section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia
12. Serge Poliakoff (Rusia, 1906-1969)
Composición IX, s.F.
Litografía
Colección MAMBO
13. El Retorno, Guaviare, 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible
14. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
15. Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (Colombia, 1923-2004)
Peces, s.F.
Mixta sobre cartón
Colección MAMBO
16. Henri Georges Adam (Francia, 1904-1967)
Écueils, 1959
Buril y Aguatinta
Colección MAMBO
17.Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (Colombia, 1923-2004)
Cabeza, 1950
Cerámica
Colección MAMBO
18. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
19. Tepuy vestiges, Chiribiquete National Natural Park. 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible
20. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
21. Benito Rosas (Perú, 1952)
Acople, 1984
Mármol
Colección MAMBO
22. Giuseppe Capogrossi (Italia, 1900-1972).
Sin título (original para la revista XXe siècle) 1958
Serigrafía
Colección MAMBO
23. Petiole tissue and pod of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) taken in stereomicroscope (cross section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia
24. The birth of the world, Chiribiquete National Natural Park. 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservacióny el Desarrollo Sostenible
AMAZONIAN LANDSCAPE
In this terrace, we established an expanded reading of the Amazonian territory and how the elements that make up the landscape can become cultural objects. The textile objects intertwined with the palm leaf refer to the appropriation of nature and the implementation of some techniques that have endured for years in the communities that inhabit these territories. We found similar patterns in the pictographs of the Serranía de la Lindosa, which invite us to carry out a synthesis reading of the landscape until it becomes an abstract image. The oil painting Flor [Flower] (1946) by Marco Ospina (Colombia, 1912-1983) and the silkscreen Selva [Jungle] (1980) by Antonio Barrera (Colombia, 1948 - France, 1990) marked a milestone in pictorial abstraction in Colombia, initiating with an attentive observation of the landscape until reaching a framed body of work in the refinement of the form.
25. Marco Ospina (Colombia, 1912-1983)
Flor, 1946
Óleo sobre tela
Colección MAMBO
26. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
27. Petiole tissue of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope
(longitudinal section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
28.Laura Mesa
Moriche palm after a fire. El Tuparro National Park. 2020
Fotografía a color
29. Colaboración Rosario López, Alberto Llanos (ceramista) y Resguardo indígena El Refugio, Guaviare.
Objeto cerámico y palma, 2019
30. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
31. Colaboración entre Rosario López, Alberto Llanos (ceramista)y Comunidad Panuré, SJG.
Mochila en palma cumare y piedra, 2020
32. Antonio Barrera (Colombia, 1948-1990)
Selva, 1980
Serigrafía
Colección MAMBO
33. Colaboración entre Rosario López,Alberto Llanos (ceramista)y Comunidad El Refugio, SJG.
Objeto cerámico y palma. 2020
34. Petiole tissue of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope (cross section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
CARTOGRAPHIC NOTIONS
The pigment’s photomicrographs, found in the panels of Nuevo Tolima, reveal the presence of iron oxides and other elements that have assured its durability on these rocky surfaces. Similar pigments were used by Rafael Echeverri (Colombia, 1952-1996) in the screenprint Tridimensional rojo [Three-dimensional red] (1992), which configures a plane color surface that fuses in a game of geometric layers. This same intention is seen in the paintings of Fanny Sanín (Colombia, 1938) and Hernando del Villar (Colombia, 1944-1989), both present in this terrace, highlighting the abstract geometrical subject matter. The relationship we propose here is a cartographic reading regarding these large color surfaces while placing them in conversation with the aerial photographs of the tepuyes that stand out from the Chiribiquete National Natural Park. Therefore, highlighting a series of modular surfaces that repeat organically throughout the territory. We believe that cave artists sketched these same modules in numerous archeological sites of the Colombian Amazon. Furthermore, an inspiration for other contemporary artists such as Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (Colombia, 1923-2004), reveled in his monumental sculpture Tanque del Silencio [Tank of Silence] (ca. 1975). The work is located on the Avenida Circunvalar, a few blocks away from the Museum, and the exhibition includes a model corresponding to this work’s preliminary studies.
35. Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) (Alemania, 1912-1994)
Carta, 1973
Aguafuerte y litografía
Colección MAMBO
36. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
37. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
38. Hernando Del Villar (Colombia, 1944-1989)
Variaciones preparatorias de una pintura I, II y III. 1969
Mixta sobre papel
Colección MAMBO
39. Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (Colombia, 1923-2004)
Cuatro módulos, 1971
Madera pintada
Colección MAMBO
40. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
41. Leaves tissue of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope with blue
staining (cross section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia
42. Sararamano, Chiribiquete National Natural Park. 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible
43. Fanny Sanín (Colombia, 1938)
Óleo N.° 2, 1969
Óleo sobre tela
Colección MAMBO
44. Rafael Echeverri (Colombia, 1952-1996)
Tridimensional rojo, 1992
Serigrafía
Colección MAMBO
45. Photomicrograph of iron oxide taken from the paintings of Nuevo Tolima, Guaviare. 2017-2018
Fotografía GIPRI
Cortesía Grupo GEGEMA.
Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
46. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
47. The birth of the world, Chiribiquete National Natural Park. 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible
ANALOG HISTOLOGY
Frank Stella (USA, 1936) in 1962 carried out an extensive body of works titled Swan Engraving Circle. In these works, he used fragments of wood, leather, and other materials to compose his images appealing to the formal strategy of applying patterns to generate rhythms and new visual readings. Stella’s circular format resembles the moriche palm’s photomicrographs (Mauritia flexuosa) conducted in the biology laboratories by this group’s team of scientists. However, this print overcomes the scale and the images’ capacity to recreate a reality, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between art and science.
48. Frank Stella (Estados Unidos, 1936)
Swan Engraving Circle,1984
Litografía monocroma sobre papel hecho a mano
Colección MAMBO.
WEFTS
Some fabrics are porous and malleable, flexible and rigid, open or closed. A textile is a constructive unit that seeks to contain, cover, unite. A silent agent that operates without being aware of it. When the textile gets messy and cluttered, it could result in a dense tangle of filaments. The Series Gaza [Gauze] (2014) by Alejandro Saíz (Colombia, 1961) contains a similar density, where the artist insists on capturing the trace on the canvas reminding us of that superposition of the filaments. The palm’s fibers are implemented for constructing the fishing object matapí, which draws spatially a textile containing a dense and heavy object. The same situation occurs in the works Cerca de Cevenas [Near Cevenas] (1962) de Piere Tal-Coat (Francia, 1905 – 1985)—this polarity between the porous and the agglutinated reminds us of the molecular structures of the photomicrographs of the moriche palm (Mauritia flexuosa). The pictograms found in Cerro Azul highlight a type of weft similar to those that appear in the works that accompany this table, inviting us to speculate due to its formal proximity and visual construction.
49. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
50. Pierre Tal-Coat (Francia, 1905-1985)
Cerca de Cevenas, s.F.
Aguatinta
Colección MAMBO
51.Detail of the vascular bundles of the petiole of the moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope. 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia
52. Petiole tissue and pod of moriche palm (M. flexuosa) viewed under the microscope(cross section). 2020
Histología
Cortesía Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
53. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
54. Piero Dorazio (Italia, 1927)
Sin título, 1962
Aguafuerte
Colección MAMBO
55. Luis Alejandro Saíz (Colombia, 1961)
De la Serie Gaza, 2014
Temple sobre tela
Colección MAMBO
56. Colaboración Rosario López y Resguardo El Refugio
Objeto cerámico y palma. 2020
RIVER
The river is a fundamental subject in constructing the symbolic imaginary for those who inhabit the Amazonian territories. This workgroup has studied the traces found in the rocky shelters of Cerro Azul and Nuevo Tolima: a set of lines that disturb us due to their vibration, repetition, and modularity. These are grouped lines that can be interpreted as the flow of air, the strike of lightning, or the river’s bifurcation. Thus, included in this terrace is the series Cardumen [Shoal] (1992) by Teresa Sánchez (Colombia, 1957), the screenprint Blue Dominance (1977) by Bridget Riley (Reino Unido, 1931), and the linoleum Sin título (no date) by Henri Laurens (France, 1885 – 1954). Through a cluster of lines, strokes, signs, these works invite us to think about this natural body that intersects the territory.
57. Bridget Riley (Reino Unido, 1931)
Blue dominance, 1977
Serigrafía
Colección MAMBO
58. The birth of the Apaporis and the Tunia, Chiribiquete National Natural Park. 2020
Aereofotografía
Cortesía Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible
59. Teresa Sánchez (Colombia, 1957)
Cardumen, 1992
Pino torneado
Colección MAMBO
60. Pictograph found at Nuevo Tolima, Serranía de la Lindosa 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique.
61. Henri Laurens (Francia, 1885-1954)
Sin título, s.F.
Linóleo
Colección MAMBO
62. Pictograph found at Cerro Azul, Serranía de la Lindosa. 2019-2021
Impresión sobre papel de fique
VIDEO