Cosmopolitical Jungle

The exhibition titled Cosmopolitan Jungle will remain open until December 13 of this year at the Museo de Arte of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. With this proposal, María Belén Saéz, curator of the exhibition, aims at promoting dialog and collective creation. The exhibition opened during the month of May of 2014. A commissioned proposal, it included the participation of artists Fabián Moreno and Abel Rodríguez—two artists well versed in traditional botanical knowledge—Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares; Miler Lagos, Delcy Morelos and Miguel Ángel Rojas; along with a group of shamans that contributed to the project. It contains sound archives from the rainforest and magical shamanistic rituals from the Amazons that serve to generate and intercultural experience based on the interaction between several artworks associated with nature and the culture of the Amazon basin: installations, sculptures, videos, sound archives, drawings and painting. Cosmopolitical Jungle proposes the Amazon basin as the thematic center with all of what it represents in terms of the relationship between nature and mankind. It also addresses our dependence on the region as well as the consideration and respect that we owe as a society to that millenary way of living, given that the Amazon basin holds the future survival of the continent and the entire world. In this sense, the project proposes a cosmogonical approach based on ancient knowledge and indigenous culture, as well as a cosmopolitan one based on planetary visions and intercultural and political outlines. In this manner the exhibition reveals the lack of conscience and care given to the notion of life and of the living, as it point to the "other" as a culturally different being that is separated from the prevailing social and economic structures. The exhibition and the processes involved in the development of the works, like the one applied by Miler Lagos, connect vulnerable communities in the city—through the Department of Social Integration of the City of Bogota—to the student communities of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and several other public and private educational institutions. This was reinforced by the fact that the artists were able to interact with several visiting communities during the five months that took to develop the exhibition. An educational program will also be developed in the context of the exhibition with the support of the Fundación Tropenbos Internacional Colombia, through workshops centered on the Amazon rainforest and its cultures. There will also be seminars that will include the participation of indigenous persons and scientists, workshops for art students, architects, designers and artists; and roundtables with the creators of the work, along with other activities that complement the exhibition. The guest speakers include: Eduardo Kohn, Paulo Tavars, Ursula Biemann and Brigitte Batiste. The commission and production of all works, interventions and records of the rainforest were requested by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia through the Dirección Nacional de Divulgación Cultural, with the administrative and logistical support of the Fundación Arteria.