"The Nature of Things: Humboldt, Comings and Goings"

The exhibition titled "The Nature of Things: Humboldt, Comings and Goings," curated by Halim Badawi, is presented at the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogota, from May 8 to July 6 of 2019. Admission is free. The show is co-produced by the Goethe-Institut and the Dirección de Patrimonio Cultural of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the context of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Alexander von Humboldt, with the support of Proyecto Bachué and the Fundación Arkhé. According to Halim Badawi, the curatorial concept behind "The Nature of Things: Humboldt, Comings and Goings" is based on the persona of Alexander von Humboldt as a historical figure that has traditionally been framed by science and absent from the history of art. In this proposal, the Prussian-born polymath reappears to show the predominant aesthetics, intersections and outlines of the art of our time, allowing for the exploration and resignification of a wide-ranging legacy of visual, cartographical, topographical, geological, and anthropological traditions. The show explores themes like the imaginary of adventure, travels, the connections between art and science, as well as Enlightenment thought understood as a double-edged sword that has furthered the development of knowledge but also of neocolonialism, inequality, and extractivism. Additionally, the exhibition explores other unknown or controversial aspects in the life of Humboldt. Divided into seven dialogs and an epilogue, "The Nature of Things: Humboldt, Comings and Goings" proposes a walk through four exhibition rooms in the museum containing works by seventeen contemporary artists from Colombia, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru in a transhistorical dialog with watercolors by twenty-five creators from the past, around one hundred works from the 19th and 20th centuries whose inquiries and creative approaches bare the Humboldtian mark. Colombian artists José Alejandro Restrepo, Liliana Sánchez, Carlos Motta, Antonio Bermúdez, and David Guarnizo, along with Spanish artist José Luis Bongore, created commissioned works for the exhibition. The show also includes pieces by the following artists: Alfredo Jaar (Chile), Óscar Santillán (Ecuador), Regina de Miguel (Spain), Camilo Echavarría (Colombia), the duo formed by Nathália Favaro (Brazil) and Miki Yui (Japan), Gianfranco Foschino (Chile), Andrés Matías Pinilla (Colombia), Luis Carlos Camargo (Colombia), Nicolás Gómez-Echeverri (Colombia); and the Mapa Teatro group, formed by performing and visual artists from Colombia, will show work created in collaboration with the guest participants, scientist, and thinkers of Experimenta Sur 2019. Works by contemporary artists enter into a dialog with works and documents from the past created by Alexander von Humboldt, Italian geologist and cartographer Agustín Codazzi, Dutch photographer Ida Esbra—who, exiled in Colombia, followed Humboldt's trace since 1959—and German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grünberg, among many others.