Curated by CHÉRPIRI*
Magic rearranges a disordered universe…
Levantar la sombra (Lifting the Shadow) is a project that emerges as a visual and cosmological chronicle. Through paintings, drawings, installation and video, the artist Giovanni Fabián Guerrero questions the power of the word as the only way to bring the properties of traditional magic to the present. Pointing to the use of these practices of collective spiritual protection in the struggle for the defense of the forests, the artist recreates his experiences on April 15, 2011 in Cherán, Michoacán, an autonomous town that decides to put an end to the violence, expelling the political parties, loggers and organized crime. Through six drawings with installed objects and rusty fragments of loggers’ trucks, Guerrero reflects on the current crisis in the Sierra Purhépecha, the community implications of global transformations, deforestation, land use change and dispossession. of indigenous territories for political interests. The exhibition is a space for interaction where the visitor encounters the mystical and the most powerful that the territory holds.
The mural at the back of the room proposes a timeless perspective to create a spiritual connection through extrahuman entities: allies, ancestors and medicinal plants, in a supernatural scene where the characters find themselves in a state of otherness between the magical universe and the world real. On the outside of LLANO we are greeted by an installation of three-meter-high burnt pine logs, conceived as the central axis of the exhibition. Each log symbolizes the comuneros and comuneras that constitute the collective structure of the community. This is articulated with the video in the center of the room, which shows a performative action carried out in the year 2021. This video presents a fire ritual, an offering, to the campfire that comes from the forest.
Text: Rosa Huaroco Sánchez
–
*CHÉRPIRI is an autonomous space of symbolic practices, a multidisciplinary proposal formed in 2021 with the intention of rethinking the existing cultural production in the P’urhépecha region, with the objective of producing, promoting and circulating knowledge around contemporary art produced from the community. Seeking to build a place for discussion and exhibition of artistic projects, management, curatorship and research where reflection around the communal and indigenous experience is prioritized. Founded and directed by Rosa Huaroco Sánchez.
–
Press: POR UN ARTE REFORESTADO, Revista La Tempestad, 2022
