Decolonial Ecologies

Joanna Page

Description

In Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art, Joanna Page illuminates the ways in which contemporary artists in Latin America are reinventing historical methods of collecting, organizing, and displaying nature in order to develop new aesthetic and political perspectives on the past and the present.


Page brings together an entirely new corpus of artistic projects from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru that engage critically and creatively with forms as diverse as the medieval bestiary, baroque cabinets of curiosities, atlases created by European travellers to the New World, the floras and herbaria composed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century naturalists, and the dioramas designed for natural history museums. She explores how artists develop decolonial and post-anthropocentric perspectives on the collections and expeditions that were central to the evolution of European natural history. Their works forge a critique of the rationalizing approach to nature taken by modern Western science, reconnecting it with forms of popular, indigenous and spiritual knowledge and experience that it has systematically excluded since the Enlightenment.


Drawing on photography, video, illustration, sculpture, and installation, this vividly illustrated and lucidly written book (also available in premium quality in hardback edition) explores how these artworks might also deconstruct the apocalyptic visions of environmental change that often dominate Western thought, developing a renewed understanding of alternative ways in which humans might co-inhabit the natural world.
 

Sujets

• Sciences de la nature
• Sciences de l'environnement
• History
• Latin America
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 14 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800649767
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

Decolonial Ecologies

Decolonial Ecologies
The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art
Joanna Page





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
©2023 Joanna Page




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Joanna Page, Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0339
Copyright and permissions for the reuse of many of the images included in this publication may differ from the above. Copyright and permissions information for images is provided separately in the List of Illustrations.
Further details about CC BY-NC-ND licenses are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-80064-973-6
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-80064-974-3
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-80064-975-0
ISBN Digital ebook (EPUB): 978-1-80064-976-7
ISBN XML: 978-1-80064-978-1
ISBN HTML: 978-1-80064-979-8
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0339
Cover image by Rodrigo Arteaga, ‘D’Histoire naturelle’ from Botánica sistemática (2015). Book intervened with plants and earth. Carmen Araujo Arte, Caracas, Venezuela. Photograph by the artist. Background image: Mona Eendra. Flowers beside Yellow Wall, February 15, 2017, https://unsplash.com/photos/vC8wj_Kphak
Cover design by Jeevanjot Kaur Nagpal

Para Clara Kriger, con afecto y amistad

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction
1. Bestiaries and the Art of Cryptozoology
2. New Cabinets of Curiosities 63
3. Floras, Herbaria, and Botanical Illustration 9 3
4. Retracing Voyages of Science and Conquest 13 7
5. Albums, Atlases, and their Afterlives 163
6. Taxidermy and Natural History Dioramas 201
Conclusion 237
Bibliography 249
Index 267

List of Illustrations
Fig. 1.1
Édgar Cano, ‘Cronotopo’ from Animalia , written by Rafael Toriz and illustrated by Édgar Cano (Mexico City: Vanilla Planifolia, 2015), 15.
30
Fig. 1.2
Édgar Cano, ‘La jirafa’ from Animalia , written by Rafael Toriz and illustrated by Édgar Cano (Mexico City: Vanilla Planifolia, 2015), 17.
32
Fig. 1.3
Édgar Cano, ‘Ahuizotl’ from Animalia , written by Rafael Toriz and illustrated by Édgar Cano (Mexico City: Vanilla Planifolia, 2015), 76.
34
Fig. 1.4
Édgar Cano, ‘Merovingio’ from Animalia , written by Rafael Toriz and illustrated by Édgar Cano (Mexico City: Vanilla Planifolia, 2015), 91.
39
Fig. 1.5
Claudio Andrés Salvador Francisco Romo Torres, ‘El perezoso’ (detail) from Bestiario: Animales reales fantásticos , written by Juan Nicolás Padrón and illustrated by Claudio Andrés Salvador Francisco Romo Torres (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2008), 48.
41
Fig. 1.6
Claudio Andrés Salvador Francisco Romo Torres, ‘Sinsimito’ from Bestiario mexicano , trans. Federico Taibi (Modena: Logosedizione, 2018), 9.
43
Fig. 1.7
Claudio Andrés Salvador Francisco Romo Torres, ‘Waay Pop’ from Bestiario mexicano , trans. Federico Taibi (Modena: Logosedizione, 2018), 37.
45
Fig. 1.8
Claudio Andrés Salvador Francisco Romo Torres, ‘Waay Pop’ from Bestiario mexicano , trans. Federico Taibi (Modena: Logosedizione, 2018), 38.
45
Fig. 1.9
Walmor Corrêa, Curupira from Unheimlich: Imaginário popular brasileiro (2005). Acrylic and graphic on canvas, 195 x 130 cm.
51
Fig. 1.10
Walmor Corrêa, Pinguisch from Natureza perversa (2003). Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 80 x 80 cm (photograph by Fabio del Re).
53
Fig. 1.11
Walmor Corrêa, Teiniaguá, vista dorsal from Salamanca do Jarau (2013). Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 90 x 110 cm (photograph by Hugo Curti).
58
Fig. 2.1
Installation view of Pablo La Padula, Zoología fantástica (2018). Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina (photograph courtesy of the Museo de la Universidad de Tres de Febrero).
65
Fig. 2.2
Francesco Calzolari’s cabinet, as shown in the frontispiece to Benedetto Ceruti, Musaeum Franc. Calceolari iun. Veronensis (1622).
67
Fig. 2.3
Installation view of Pablo La Padula, Zoología fantástica (2018). Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina (photograph by Gabriela Schevach, courtesy of REV magazine).
68
Fig. 2.4
Installation view of Pablo La Padula, Zoología fantástica (2018). Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina (photograph by the artist).
68
Fig. 2.5
Installation view of Pablo La Padula, Teatro científico (2020). Fundación Federico Jorge Klemm, Buenos Aires, Argentina (photograph by the artist).
74
Fig. 2.6
Installation view of Cristian Villavicencio, Selecciones (2019). Arte Actual Flacso, Quito, Ecuador (photograph by the artist).
78
Fig. 2.7
Installation view of Cristian Villavicencio, Selecciones . Exhibited as part of Tecnologías de la experiencia in the 15th Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2021) (photograph by Ricardo Bohórquez).
78
Fig. 2.8
Still from video produced by Cristian Villavicencio for Dimensiones paralelas (2017). Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, Bilbao, Spain.
80
Fig. 2.9
Installation view of Cristian Villavicencio, Especímenes , two-channel video projection from Dimensiones paralelas (2017). Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, Bilbao, Spain (photograph by the artist).
80
Fig. 2.10
Cristian Villavicencio, Megatherium , shown without the glass dome with which it was exhibited, from Dimensiones paralelas (2017). Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, Bilbao (photograph by the artist).
82
Fig. 2.11
Cristian Villavicencio, Jardín from Dimensiones paralelas (2017). Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, Bilbao, Spain (photograph by the artist).
83
Fig. 2.12
Cristian Villavicencio and Agata Mergler, Haptic Cameras—4 simultaneous cameras (2016) (photograph by Cristian Villavicencio).
85
Fig. 2.13
Installation view of Cristian Villavicencio, Tecnologías de la experiencia (2021). Tecnologías de la experiencia (video, back wall); Silbato , 50.0 cm x 40.0 cm x 50.0 cm (back left); Espejo sonoro , 160 cm x 40 cm x 40 cm (back right); Resonar/excavar (foreground). 15th Cuenca Bienal, Cuenca, Ecuador (photograph by Ricardo Bohórquez).
88
Fig. 3.1
Alberto Baraya, Taxones Tabatinga (2014) from the Herbario de plantas artificiales . Found object “Made in China,” photography and drawing on cardboard, 56.0 x 82.0 cm (photograph by the artist).
98
Fig. 3.2
Alberto Baraya, Borrachero doble (Double Devil’s Trumpet, 2014) from the Herbario de plantas artificiales . Found object “Made in China,” photography and drawing on cardboard, 112.0 x 82.0 cm (photograph by the artist).
100
Fig. 3.3
Juan Francisco Mancera, Giganton. Datura from the Drawings of the Royal Botanical Expedition to the New Kingdom of Granada . Image from the digitalization project of the drawings of the Royal Botanical Expedition to the New Kingdom of Granada (1783–1816) directed by José Celestino Mutis: www.rjb.csic.es/icones/mutis. Real Jardín Botán