Image © Alejandro Jaime
Peruvian artist highlights the frailty and beauty of the Amazon in his latest individual exhibition.
Alejandro Jaime has been at the forefront of ecologically conscious land art in Latin America for almost a decade. His art stretches across every corner of Peru and his art has always been deeply married to the inner force of this planet. His work is constantly channelling the voice of an ailing environment. His travels through deepest and darkest Peruvian territories cry ailing laments of the devastation that these natural wonders have suffered for so long at the expense of progress and modernity.
‘Huallaga,’ his latest individual exhibit is the result of his travels up and down the Huallaga River which is at the very heart of the Northern Peruvian Amazon, land that has for years been struck with war, terrorism, drug trafficking, deforestation and contamination.
Huallaga
Alejandro Jaime Carbonel.
Individual Exhibit. Galería Cecilia González. Lima, Perú, November 2010.
[translated by Miguel Pretel]
* The Huallaga River is an emblematic river in the recent history of Peru, it runs almost half the country’s territory from the Andes mountain range – where its born – to the low lands in the Amazon. To this day, remnants of terrorism and drug trafficking remain lifeless along its banks. This tumultuous times reached their peek towards the end of the eighties. During this tragic internal conflict the river was remembered more as common grave and had its waters dyed blood red from all the bodies being dumped in river.
Huallaga I Fotografía - registro de señalizaciones en el territorio formando un círculo, Pasco - Loreto.
When you hear or read about the Huallaga River, you immediately associate this natural entity with feelings of fear, uncertainly and rejection.
The Huallaga is and has been the stage for fevers, conflicts and circumstances which makes this river unique to the country’s history;
First was the rubber boom, after that was the Barbasco boom (Lonchocarpus uruc) (plant from which the toxin Rotenone is extract and was used for the DDT production) and from the last 2 decades lives the coca boom.
All these fevers brought with it social and environmental devastation that the media stigmatized from afar.
My generation grew up with a resistance towards that name.
How can a whole landscape, a complete entity that crosses 3 regions and four altitudinal floors can contain so much of an emotional burden and how can this be so extended collectively in a deferred way?
Since 2006 I traveled the course of the Huallaga River in many ways; from its origin at the Huascacocha lagoon in Pasco to the point it merges with the Marañon River in the Loreto region, with the purpose of understanding this river and not keeping it in my memory like a media fabrication.
With the mental figure of making a proposal from this trip with an eminent political shade, the trip started focusing on the different social tensions and the remnants of the collective local memory that forms the idea we have of the river.
The journey itself started to dissipate the initial statements and self-generated spontaneous experiences of what happened and what we found; the geography, the time and the people made me re-process my ideas.
The final statement materialized with the experience of traveling the “cuenca” – and was with the risk of being naïf that the river still emerged to transcend half a century of dark history and to express more history as sections of it are still in conflict and continues to generate stories.
It is very possible that the cycle of the river will out-live us, it already survived many cultures.
Life flows along its communities and its permanent dynamic of interchange takes away and mystifies old stories, but never forgets.
And although the river turned to red literally, the history is from man itself and that red seems to belong to him and its landscape and not to the territory, this has its own time.
Finally I come back to a basic and simple reflection which is the basis for the initial circle of the proposal.
Huallaga is the chronic of this afirmation.
Alejandro Jaime Carbonel Lima, Perú (1978)
photograph interventions © Alejandro Jaime Carbonel
Huallaga II / Drawing on Paper (Mixed media) © Alejandro Jaime Carbonel
