Cartographies of the Unseen

In the spring of 2020, Lydia Zimmermann and Felipe Castelblanco embarked on a journey across ancestral territories in Southwest Colombia, conducting a counter-expedition from the lower Amazon to the high Andes. Along with members of Ñambi Rimai, the artists followed the course of the water as it morphed from a vast river into sacred plants and finally into ghostly clouds. Along this nonlinear journey, the water connects histories of abuse and dispossession, as well as intellectual re-evaluation and resistance across the various altitudes that it passes through.

For centuries, the region has been the epicenter of ecological violence, genocide, mineral extraction and dispossession despite its important role in the stability of the entire Amazon ecosystem. Indigenous communities occupy an important, fragile and much-disputed layer of this vertical territory. Over the past few decades new forms of governance, self-representation and efforts at bio-cultural peacebuilding have reemerged and these communities have launched cross-regional alliances and cooperation. The media have become an important tool in this process, so the exhibition Cartographies of the Unseen serves as a platform for reciprocity, ethnic and cultural communities and justice. The artists involved in the project have provided training, support, tools and, with this exhibition, space for the indigenous film collective. The exhibition features works created during workshops and produced with different indigenous communities.