Abel rodriguez biography
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Abel Rodríguez (Mogaje Guihu)
Chagra (farm) cycle
Contrary to popular belief, the soil in the Amazon is not highly fertile. Over millennia, Indigenous communities have devised a sustainable way to cope with this: the chagra. To create the chagra, the community clears a patch in the dense jungle canopy by controlled burning. The ash and decaying matter that mixes with the soil, and the increased access to sunlight, creates the conditions for cultivated crops to grow. After a certain period, which varies depending on the location, the soil becomes depleted again. When this happens, the community abandons the chagra and begins the process elsewhere, allowing the jungle to grow back and the soil to recuperate.
Abel Rodríguez explains the process:
Chagra, three months.
“It is better to sow the yucca first, above all, and then the tubers, those are the first ones; from there you can plant grapes and caimo and then you can sow them and plant other fruit trees. You start on one side
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Works
Abel Rodríguez
(b. 1944, Cahuinarí region, Colombia)
Ciclo anual dem los árboles de la maloca (Annual cycle of the trees surrounding the Maloca [longhouse], 2009)
Ink, graphite, and watercolor on paper
Naturkundemuseum im Ottoneum, Kassel
Selected drawings from the series “Annual Cycle of the Flooded Rainforest,” “Studies of Principal Trees in the Forest,” “Trees with Legends,” “The Cultivated Plants of the Center People,” “Drawings of Pineapples,” “Drawings of Various Species of Yuccas,” “Drawings of Cassavas and Other Tubers” (ca. 2009–16)
Ink, graphite, and watercolor on paper
Various dimensions
Small Fish Trap (2010)
Yaré fiber
90 × 45 cm
Small Fish Trap (2010)
Yaré fiber
90 × 45 cm
Big Fish Trap (2013)
Yaré fiber
150 × 80 cm
All works Tropenbos International
All works Palais Bellevue, Kassel
Abel Rodríguez’s drawings komma from a confluence of several stories. The first is Mogaje Guihu’s. Born Nonuya, circa 1944, in the headwaters
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Abel Rodríguez
Abel Rodríguez was born Mogaje Guihu in the Putumayo Department of Colombia and trained as a botanical expert amongst the Nonuya, one of several Amazonian ethnic groups. The works exhibited in the Biennale Arte are characteristic of Rodríguez’s recent production. Sin título (2023) is from a series that focuses on the taxonomical exploration of different varieties of Amazonian trees, capturing their distinct characteristics such as colour, leaf shape, trunk texture, and overall plant architecture. These meticulous depictions correspond to the specimen’s real-life characteristics and serve not only as compelling artistic representations, but also as scientifically accurate portrayals of Amazonian biodiversity. Centro el terreno que nunca se inunda (2022), a cross section of the Amazonian rainforest presented in a flat perspective, is a composition in which several species of flora coexist with animals and elements of the landscape. It speaks of the way that trees