Sylvan Thinking, is an ongoing body of work that emerges after two years living in the in the upper region... Read More
Sylvan Thinking, is an ongoing body of work that emerges after two years living in the in the upper region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The works in this project recognize a plurality of ways of knowing and are co-created with the materials they embody. I have engaged in researching relational ontology, Amazonian cosmologies and European occultism in dialogue with, object oriented ontology, explored though painting, gathering and re-signifying materialities. Through the entanglement of these divergent topics I have been able to articulate a visual language that acts as a map of thought. Materials, their agency and meaning speak. The ground of the paintings is Llanachama bark cloth made from the llanchama tree. This cloth has been used as a clothing material by the Sapara peoples from Ecuador for millennia. I see this material not just as a ground for making work but also as other than human collaborator, an emissary from the forest. As a tree the llanchama was part of an ecosystem, a web of interconnected agencies and beings, it holds that memory in its materiality. Other meaningful materials start populating the paintings, Huairuro protector seeds, obsidian rocks, handmade paper and achiote pigments are in dialogue and tension with traditional materials in painting like oil paint, watercolors and resin. Each one of the materials used in the making of the works hold a history of their own and by the juxtaposition of the whole they create a web of sylvan thinking through odd connections and material explorations.
