By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
As we celebrate Earth Month, we want to feature an Indigenous artist Mogaje Guihu who grew up in the Amazonian rainforest, which are the lungs of the planet. He is better known as Abel Rodríguez, who was forced to flee his homeland. But his mind still walks among its trees. With every line and hue, his art revives a vanishing world, which he considers his spiritual children born of memory and love.
All of us at the Alliance fell in love with the “lusciously vibrant greens” in this work Terraza Alta II (2018), which “explode from the page in a joyous celebration of the beauty and wonder of nature,” says Artsy. “Rodríguez’s profound engagement with the unique ecosystem of the rainforest is evident in everything from the intricately observed shapes of leaves to his depictions of birds perching in trees and animals foraging on the forest’s floor.”
How the “Namer of Plants” Got Named
Mogaje Guihu is an elder visual artist of the Nonuya people and a deep connoisseur of plants and ecological systems of the Amazon Basin. He was born in 1944 in Cahuinarí, in the Colombian Amazon, and has been living in Bogotá since the 2000s.
In the 1980s, biologist Carlos Rodríguez was looking for local guides to identify Amazonian plants. Indigenous rainforest local Mogaje Guihu was recommended as the ideal person. Guihu was “trained since his childhood by an uncle to be a ‘namer of plants’ and ‘a repository of the community’s knowledge about the various botanical species in the forest, their practical uses and their ritual importance,’” according to Colombian magazine Contemporary And.
“Thus began a relationship that would also determine Abel’s insertion into the art universe,” according to Contemporary And. They became so close that Abel adopted Rodríguez as his Western name.
Carlos Rodríguez “encouraged him to draw to keep his memories alive. This encouragement increased after a traumatic diasporic process: in the 1990s, Abel Rodríguez had to leave his native region to flee the armed conflict that had taken hold of the country and was devastating the region’s natural resources.”
The Power of Memory and Fully Expressing Ourselves in the World
It’s amazing that Abel Rodríguez is able to recreate the world of his childhood without returning to the Amazon rainforest. It’s seemingly inconceivable for most of us that we’d have the ability to go back to our childhood and be totally present to all of the images, smells and life forces that we experienced. However, that’s exactly the gift he has given us. It’s a reminder that all of us have those senses deep inside us.
Rodríguez shared about his evolution as a non-artist with MoMA (excerpted):
“I hadn’t painted much, and at the beginning nothing came out right. It looked ugly. But what mattered was going to the forest in my thoughts and mind, and speaking and naming from there. Once I am there, I write down the colors and scents, where they are, what animals eat them and when they rot.
“The translation is not easy — there are a lot of names I know in my language that I am not sure how to turn into Spanish. The paintings help me translate without words, to communicate what’s in my mind, and to show it in a way people understand.”
An Indigenous World in Which There Is No “Artist”
MoMA drew Rodríguez into an ever deepening discussion of his art and his connection to the plants as his children while poignantly acknowledging how the world continues to change and will never be the same.
“[My art] might not produce fruits, but it does provide me with sustenance. I make a nice living from what I paint. I don’t want for anything, and I laugh and enjoy myself. I can also travel with my family to the different exhibitions I am in. They call me an artist, but I don’t know what kind of an artist. We don’t have that concept. In my language, we speak of knowledge, work, intelligence, and craft — that is what is behind images. Art? I don’t think so.”
“Remaking plants in my drawings reminds me of the passing of generations, of having a child. We call our thoughts children — spiritual children who are always with us. You try to capture that figure or harvest the same as it was before, but it will never be the same.
“Everything changes every day; on some days there are more and more fallen leaves and roots — their living form changes. You might want the drawing to look like the real thing, but it will never turn out the same. It has to change in some way, just like children, who come from you but never turn out just like you.”
IT HAS BEEN A GREAT PLEASURE TO READ YOUR REVIEW OF THE GREENING OF ART IN A WORLD THAT IS STRUGGLING TO FIND ITS WAY THROUGH THE COMPLEX CHANGES WE ARE FACING. TO KNOW THERE IS THAT CREATIVE OPEN SPIRIT OUT THERE IS AN INSPIRING MESSAGE TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH IN OUR DAILY WORLD OF EXPERIENCES.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING THE ART AND THOUGHTS FOR US TO PARTICIPATE IN A WAY TO EXPAND OUR VISION.
ROSLYE ULTAN/CURATOR/INTERDICIPLANARY ART HISTORIAN/SMITHSONIAN FELLOW