"The Origin of Night"
The Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia presents the group and multidisciplinary exhibition titled "The Origin of Night" curated by María Belén Sáez de Ibarra.
"The Origin of Night" consists of several sensitive proposals that convey the relationship between the living and sacred realms, the wisdom of six indigenous communities from the Amazon basin and their relationship with the territory, as well as the cataclysm produced when entering into contact with the capitalist world and other people's wars—like the internal conflict in Colombia. Supported by a contemporary conception of an archive aims at "awakening memories from the past today to bring them into the future," the exhibition relies on several photographic, sound, and audiovisual material by creators interested in exploring, capturing, and preserving values, knowledge, and traditions from indigenous cultures.
In this manner, we find photographs by Brazilian Claudia Andújar, the film Xapiri by Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima (also from Brazil), work by photographer Jesús Abad Colorado, material by biologist and naturalist Juan Manuel Rengifo, the audiovisual installation by Carolina Caycedo, and the central piece around which the show has been built and whose title serves as the name of the exhibition: the sound installation El Origen de la Noche (The Origin of Night) by the 4Direcciones group. The piece includes sound material, recorded in indigenous communities as far back as 1918, which interact in a creative work that relied in the collaboration of contemporary indigenous people.
"The "Origin of Night" references the indigenous myth shared by communities from the Amazon basin. It narrates the origin of shamanism and its political, social, and cultural organization: the owners of the night are mythic entities that gave the ancestors of mankind a box containing the night. Chants, incantations, dances, feathers, clothes, death, night, spiritual powers, as well as physical and natural forces converged there. This box gave clear instructions to be opened inside a maloca [an ancestral long house], because it was in there where they could receive the power to control their environment, heal the world, keep tragedy at bay, invite abundance, cure time, and achieve the vision of the physical and spiritual worlds.
Based on this myth, and with the permission and advice of spiritual leaders from the indigenous ethnic groups Barasano, Andoque, Huitoto (Murui), Wayuu, Kogui, and Tubu, the exhibition "The Origin of Night" opens the sacred box of these communities to transform the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional in a maloca that encourages the spiritual healing of its visitors. The entire exhibition centers on one piece, with a profound emphasis on sound as an ideal way to connect with a musical, telepathic, culture with different sensorialities and mental visions with a highly functioning conscience.
The exhibition showcases proposals by artists working in different professions, including: Claudia Andújar, Gisela Motta, and Leandro Lima (in collaboration with 14 Yanomami shamans from the Amazon); Jesús Abad Colorado, Juan Manuel Rengifo, Carolina Caycedo and the collaborative duo 4direcciones formed by Diana Rico and Richard Décaillet, in dialog with: Fisi Andoque, Mayor Tradicional, from Araracuara, the Amazons; Reynaldo Giagrekudo, Mayor Huitoto, from Chorrera, the Amazons, and Reynel Ortega and Hee Gu Barasano, from Río Pira Paraná, in the Vaupés.
