
WE ARE A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ART COLLECTIVE DEDICATED TO EXPLORE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOOD AND CONFLICT THROUGH ANY ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

AMAZONAS NEW SPECIES
Omar Castañeda uses gold to play with ideas of value and hierarchy. In his sculpture Heart two bird feet reach out of a gold plated tin can, forming a heart shape. These are encased by a glass jar, presented as a museum relic. For Castañeda, the tin is a crucial motif, referencing the point we desire imports and exoticize foreign commodities, thus abandoning our own traditions. He observes the shift from something being imposed upon a culture, to a culture expecting, even wanting that imposition. This piece specifically references a phenomena which has arisen from the recent peace-time in Colombia. After the signing of the 2016 treaty, large areas previously dominated by FARC have been opened up to the rest of the country and thus to the rest of the world. This creates both positive and negative impacts especially in the Amazon where biologists and botanists have discovered new plant and animals species and simultaneously previously isolated and protected indigenous communities have been rapidly exposed to the modern world bringing with it disease, technology and an influx of new food including tinned products and most problematically, sugar.