NEW YORK — The myth of El Dorado, the kingdom of gold hidden in the indigenous lands of America, lives on in the different values that feed the “American dream”, according to an exhibition that opens this Wednesday in New York.
“El Dorado: myths of gold” gathers in the Americas Society dozens of works of art and historical objects from the pre-Hispanic period to contemporary times, many made by indigenous artists, to offer new interpretations, raise critical questions and, in short, “complicate” and revise the legend.
The exhibition is the result of a “very broad effort between a group of artists, curators and intellectuals in Latin America, North America and Europe”, and more than giving explanations, it wants to open up the concept of El Dorado as a “necessarily unattainable” destination, they explain. those responsible to the EFE agency.
“We say ‘gold myths’, in the plural, because there are not only the myths of El Dorado during the first contact period and the colonial period: we see how El Dorado has been transformed, just as alchemy tried to create gold from other materials. , in rubber, in oil (or) in lithium…”, says the chief curator, Aimé Iglesias Lukin.
“It is a warning about the mistakes of the past so that we try to change them in the future, and to think about ourselves in America,” adds the expert, who in this context describes the “American dream” as “an input in the different extractivist moments, with different materials, on the continent”.
The city of gold has been transformed, suggests the text that welcomes the visitor in the institution’s gallery, into “more intangible values, although equally powerful, personal and collective, such as individualism, greed and consumption, central to contemporary capitalist societies”.
The tour begins with two figurines from the Quimbaya civilization (located in what is now Colombia), from between 600 and 1,400 BC, and a mask from Lambayeque (north coast of Peru), between 900 and 1,100 BC, examples of gold objects with sacred weight and coveted by the conquerors.
Also noteworthy are several engravings by the Belgian Theodor de Bry that portray the first European expeditions to the Americas and maps with which the colonizers guided their trips, one of them with the supposed location of Lake Parima, where El Dorado was believed to be.
The story is interspersed with recent times in pieces of a political nature, such as a golden United States flag, the work of Mexican Rubén Ortiz Torres, which represents “a golden cage” and criticizes the “consumerism that many migrants seek to achieve by arriving here,” explains associate curator Tie Jojima.
Or the golden floats of the Dominican Scheherazade García, with labels from JFK airport, which evoke “the current migration crisis, whether it is people fleeing the Mediterranean or the Caribbean,” says the New York University history professor. Edward Sullivan, also organizer.
The Brazilian indigenous artist Moara Tupinambá shows, through surreal photographic collages, scenes of “apocalypse” that show the degradation of nature and serve as an omen of what can happen when the rage for gold, in its classical sense or in its new forms, cloud the senses of modern explorers.
The Brazilian Laura Vinci also reflects that “fragility” of the Earth, with sculptures in the form of golden tree leaves that decorate a wall, and that invite us to reflect on how “Western culture values gold much more than nature.”
Half a hundred pieces, including paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures and videos, make up this exhibition, the first of two parts, carried out in collaboration with the PROA Foundation in Buenos Aires and the Amparo Museum in Puebla, and which will be complemented by a series of public programs, including an academic symposium.
2023-09-07 13:53:51
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