![MEMÓRIAS DE ALAGAMENTO. [Flooded Memories]. UÝRA](https://www.mambogota.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Uyra_Piezas_2025-1_Banner_Web-copy-2-1.jpg)
— 01.06.2025
MEMÓRIAS DE ALAGAMENTO. [Flooded Memories]. UÝRA
Memórias de alagamento [Flooded Memories] is the first institutional solo exhibition in Colombia by the Amazonian artist UÝRA, whose work intertwines water, identity, and resistance to challenge environmental devastation and forced displacement.
- The title of the exhibition, Memórias de alagamento [Flooded Memories], evokes water’s ability to remember its course and reappear even after being buried. In her work, UÝRA explores how bodies of water preserve the memory of territories and their inhabitants, connecting Amazonian rivers with urban water basins that have been contaminated, diverted, or erased.
- In A porra da árvore (2019), A terra pelada (2018), and the series Mil quase mortos (2018), UÝRA channels the lament of the rainforest devastated by extractivism, denouncing indiscriminate deforestation and river pollution in the urban context of Manaus. These works transform nature into both witness and spokesperson for the environmental crisis.
- During her residency in Bogotá, the artist delved into the San Francisco-Vicachá River, a waterway buried beneath the city. This process led to a reflection on the shared history of displaced Indigenous communities in Colombia and Brazil, drawing parallels between the diaspora of the Munduruku people—to which UÝRA belongs—and the struggles of the Muisca peoples in the Bogotá Savanna.
The exhibition is structured into three movements: traversing, reflecting, and connecting. Water flows through territories and time, reflecting the transformations of landscapes and societies, while its channels serve as links between geographies, memories, and multidimensional realities.
Through a practice that merges biology, Indigenous ecology, and performance, UÝRA reinterprets the relationship between body and territory. Her work is a call to reclaim the silenced voices of nature and communities that have been forced to disappear.
About the artist
UÝRA, 33 years old, Indigenous in diaspora, two-spirited (Travesti), living in Manaus, Amazonas – Brazil. She is a biologist with a master’s degree in Amazonian Ecology and works as a visual artist and art educator in traditional communities. She resides in an industrial territory within the forest, where she transforms herself to embody a Walking Tree, always created with organic elements.
UÝRA has participated in more than 50 collective exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and has presented five solo exhibitions, including her debut at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the Currier Museum of Art (USA). She has been featured in the 34th São Paulo Biennial, Manifesta Biennial! (Kosovo), the 13th São Paulo Architecture Biennial, and the 1st Biennial of the Amazons. She has also won prestigious awards such as the EDP Award in the Arts – Instituto Tomie Ohtake, the PIPA Prize 2022, the SIM Award for Racial Equality 2023, and the FOCO Arte Rio Prize 2023. UÝRA uses her body as a medium to tell stories of different natures through photo-performance, performance, and installations. She is deeply interested in living systems and their violations, and through the lenses of diversity, dissidence, function, and adaptation, she (re)tells natural stories, enchantments, and diasporas that exist in the forest-city landscape.
Her works are part of national collections, private collectors, and institutions, including the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Instituto PIPA, as well as international collections such as the Castello di Rivoli (Italy), the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art of New York (ISLAA), the Currier Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA, USA).
Courtesy of the artist
Photo by: Juan Echeverria y Esteban Suárez (2022).
Curator: Eugenio Viola: Born in Naples, Italy, he is a curator, art critic, and holds a PhD in Methods and Methodologies of Archaeological and Historical-Artistic Research from the University of Salerno. He worked as Chief Curator at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea DonnaRegina – MADRE (Naples) from 2009 to 2016. There, he was responsible for research on the museum’s collection and co-curated the first large-scale exhibitions in Italy by Boris Mikhailov, Francis Alÿs, and Daniel Buren, among others. From 2017 to 2019, he was Chief Curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts – PICA and is currently Chief Curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá – MAMBO. In 2016 and 2019, Viola was recognized as the best Italian curator by Artribune magazine. Likewise, Viola curated the Estonian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale (Jaanus Samma, ‘NSFW- Not Suitable For Work. A Chairman’s Tale’, Palazzo Malipiero, Venice). Afterwards, it was organized at the Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn, Estonia; an exhibition listed among the 15 best exhibitions in the world in 2016 by Hyperallergic, a leading American voice in contemporary art and culture perspectives. His curatorial practice has focused on experiences and theories related to new media, performance, and bodily poetics, about which he has published various articles and given numerous lectures. His writings have been published in international media such as ArtForum, Exit Express, and Flash Art. He has worked with important artists such as Marina Abramović, Regina José Galindo, Francis Alÿs, ORLAN, Kimsooja, Carlos Martiel, Teresa Margolles, Amalia Pica, Carlos Garaicoa, and Maria José Arjona, among others. Viola was appointed Curator of the Italian Pavilion 2022 for the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, which opened on April 23, 2022.
Curatorship: Juaniko Moreno: Curator and researcher interested in cosmotechnics, language and information, nature/culture divide, and art and sustainability projects. He holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the National University of Colombia, and a Master’s in Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies from the China Academy of Art, in Hangzhou. He was part of the research think-tank The Terraforming 2021 at the Strelka Institute, and currently works as a professor in the Fine Arts Program at the Universidad del Bosque and as a junior curator for the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá – MAMBO.