BPA// Raum 03.08.–15.09.2024

The group show “Tiempo de Siembra” (sowing time), curated by BPA// participant Simon Speiser, brings together various positions from the contemporary Ecuadorian art world that work at the intersection of nature and technology.

In 2009 during the reformation of the Ecuadorian constitution, the Andean concept “Sumac Kawsay” was introduced, commonly translated as “well-living”, the term signifies a departure from Western socialist theory, embracing ancestral, communitarian knowledge and the culture of the Quechua people. It called for nature to be recognised with rights, akin to human beings. Unfortunately many of these ideas did not materialise into action. However, the recent referendum in 2023 saw an astounding majority of the Ecuadorian population opposing oil exploitation in the Amazon, during times of crisis. This underscores a consistent understanding for the importance of reconciling contemporary life with the environment.

This resonance is strongly reflected in the work of many Ecuadorian artists, with some shedding light on the exploitation of the natural resources, its technologies and their environmental impacts. Others analyse a spectrum of technologies, from indigenous technologies to our present digital worlds and speculative technologies, in search for a symbiotic coexistence.

Artists included:

In her artistic practice, Angelica Alomoto explores the intersections of ritual, body, and image through the lens of Andean-Amazonian thought and art, fostering dialogue across diverse knowledge spaces. She delves into sound, image, and representation in specific cultural contexts and art education to build collaborative epistemic bridges in artistic, popular, and community education. Her aim is to contribute to the dissemination of art that transcends elitist discourses, promoting practices and aesthetics grounded in alternative logics.

(Left to right) Paula Proaño Mesías, Angelica Alomoto, Oscar Santillán

Aquiles Jarrín is an artist and visual anthropologist. He was born in Quito and currently resides in Berlin. His work develops at the intersections of architecture, archaeology, anthropology, and communication. He explores and investigates the relationships between objects, space, and materiality to develop conversations between the human and non-human, expressed in speculative, visual, and narrative fictions. He is currently researching the relationships between territory, displacement, and the impacts of extractive practices in the contexts of change and technological advancement.

**Aquiles Jarrín - From mother earth to motherboard**, etched motherboard, copper structure, 2024 This piece juxtaposes the technological and anti-colonial narratives of Georgius Agricola's "De Re Metallica" and Guaman Poma's "Nueva Crónica y buen gobierno," two 16th-century texts. Presented as a sacred book or computer screen, it facilitates a dialogue through AI, imposing a Western aesthetic where AI-generated visuals overshadow Poma's mestizo graphics. The copper plate, etched using a chemical process typical in artisan circuit construction, highlights the continuum from early extraction practices to modern technology. By incorporating spiritual elements of the earth, often negated by AI, the piece critiques the legacy of colonialism in technological advancement.

Martina Miño Pérez is a visual artist whose work focuses on the creation of “incarnations” and “immersions” that use taste, smell and touch as essential tools for interpreting various types of sensitive languages. Her pieces often imply the “desolidification” of the work or the “dissolution” of the visible object and its internalization as a transformative device. She uses the poetics of “digestion” as a metaphor for the assimilation of concepts and my material research explores its poetic potential. In a similar way to contemporary alchemy, she uses resin, iron, stone, wax, gelatin and other materials to produce transformative vessels, while employing experimental techniques from culinary science. Her pieces want to provoke intimate and ritual, sensorial and collective encounters between the work and its audiences.

Juan Carlos León, is a migrant artist from Ecuador in Mexico, his work is characterized by a constant hybrid identity. His production explores the development of landscapes and "sensitive data visualizations," electronic, robotic, and automated sculptures that include experimental scientific research processes, merging culture and nature, art and science. He often works with materials rich in physical and symbolic qualities (oil, water, fungi, medicinal plant extracts, waxes, resins, etc.), from which economic, religious, mythological, and cultural connotations also emanate. His current work explores the plant world, addressing its migration, its spirits, and its energies, from the molecular and microscopic to their cosmologies.

Paula Proaño Mesías’ work reflects on various technological structures and their cultural and political dimensions. Through various mediums such as performance, sculpture, video, and installation, Proaño Mesías assesses Western conceptions of the natural world, defying human-centered notions and norms. In her projects, she creates prosthetic hybrids that transcend purely human forms by expanding the body with sculptural objects, articulating the multiplicity and heterogeneity of a process of subjectivation beyond the human.

Oscar Santillán is an artist and the founder of studio ANTIMUNDO, based between Amsterdam and Quito. His practice emerges precisely from the concept of 'Antimundo', a cybernetic matrix where science, fiction, and non-human perspectives converge. Antimundo is "a way of identifying and generating realities that do not fit in the world”, interweaving various media as well as old and new materialities.

Simon Speiser is an German-Ecuadorian artist known for his interdisciplinary approach that merges nature and technology through various media, including writing, sculpture, virtual reality, installations, and printmaking. His works explores themes of origins and the interplay between human and technological worlds. Blending virtual reality and ancestral folklore, weaving science fiction with non-western conceptions of technology, and believing in storytelling as a tool in the fight against dystopian thinking, Speiser often creates immersive, sensory experiences that highlight the convergence of traditional knowledge and contemporary digital techniques, showcasing the resilience and adaptability of precolonial cultures.

About the BPA// Raum: BPA// is an artist-led organization, founded in 2016 by Angela Bulloch, Simon Denny and Willem de Rooij. The program is centered around mutual studio-visits between participants and mentors. It is punctuated with a range of public events, organized together with both artist-run spaces and renowned institutions. BPA// is a partner of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, where a yearly exhibition of participants’ works takes place.

Participation in BPA// lasts two years. It is free of charge and participants receive support to produce new work.

Tiempo de Siembra

Florida Prize in Contemporary Art