Artists' remedies for our abused planet

medicines It's a very attractive title for this exhibition, the second annual of the TBA21 Foundation at C3A in Córdoba, thanks to a million-dollar agreement with the Junta de Andalucía. Whether as a proper name, used mainly in the south, or as a common noun, it is intended to be a positional statement, on the one hand, that the Foundation moved to Spain and is very identified with Córdoba and its past coexistence between the three cultures. And we also cannot forget that the Virgen de los Remedios was the first to be revered in New Spain. But going to the heart of the matter, it is a demonstration that this project continues to believe in transforming reality, even if it is through the remedies that artists offer us.

Remedies, repairs, corrections, all of which belongs to informal culture, far from Western technological and economic-political planning. In fact, despite the alliance between politics and scientific research having saved us from the deadly pandemic, there is the impression that predatory consumerism and necropolitics are not being stopped.

General insecurity about the future of an endangered planet is leading young people, once again, to an interest in astrology or psychotics, keys to new, subjective but alternative perceptions, in the face of distrust of the consequences of rationalist positivism. So, yes, we are here in search of medicines, which today come from other non-Western cultures, still surviving.

Most of the more than forty artists in this exhibition, whose works belong to the collection or had the support of TBA21 for their production, were in connection with spirit guides and native healers in the Amazon jungles, the Pacific and the African diaspora. Others remain linked to rites of their ancestral origins. There are reparative proposals here for caring for oneself and others, but also criticisms that demand reparation for damage inflicted in the past and present.

The hard core is made up of large installations and imposing pieces, despite the poverty of the materials and their artisanal nature. At the center of the tour is O kupixawa Created by Amerindian Huní Kuin in collaboration with Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto. In a version of a magnitude greater than that presented in his retrospective at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and at the Venice Biennale, he recalls that remedies are shared and that, in a way, this proposal by Daniela Zyman, chief curator of the TBA21 Collection, aspires to bring together and heal communities, there “where a new land could grow”.

The hard core of the sample is made up of impressive installations, despite the poverty of the materials and their artisanal nature.

This is the subtitle of this exhibition, taken from a poem in which Natalie Díaz, born in the Fort Mojave Indian village of Needles, California, reflects the anxiety of being “marikan”, American and “ndn”, indigenous Indian. Additionally, the poem grew out of a collaboration between Diaz and Brad Kahlhamer in their hometown of Tucson, a sacred place for the Tohono O'odham people.

Brad Kahlhamer is the best represented artist in this exhibition. In addition to its impressive metallic dreamcatchers, emulating one of the most well-known and explored symbols of indigenous peoples, it adds a large protective totem and a collage. In it, one first intuits and then, reading the well-informed posters, one realizes the tensions experienced by this artist belonging to the so-called “stolen generation” of indigenous children who grew up ignorant of their origins.

[Abundant futures… in the best of cases]

Perhaps that's why, years later, living in New York's Bowery, he spent almost three decades creating hundreds of amulets, small figures made with materials found on his fishing trips in the Hudson Valley and in several local workshops that end up forming a large assembly. .

Lastly, Another great installation is the one created by artist Courtney Desiree Morris since her pregnancy, at a moment defined by racist state violence that led to the Black Lives Matter movement and the global pandemic. Threats that she exorcises with rituals and the memory of so many children killed in ingrained videos, and with the altar dedicated to Yemayá, “mother of the children of fish”, alluding to the immensity of her fertility.

Of course, like every great exhibition, it has its contrasts and deviations, including linguistic ones. Typical collector affiliations: Cruzvillegas or Francesca Woodman repeat here, already included in the previous one abundant futures. And it's good news that Spanish artists like Regina de Miguel, Asunción Molinos Gordo, designer Víctor Barrios, Belén Rodríguez and Teresa Solar continue to be added to this important international collection by others like Mònica Planes.

Follow the topics that interest you