Felipe Castelblanco long term project’s Cartographies of the unseen as opening event for Regionale 21 with exhibition in Basel, Ausstellungsraum.
A project conceived and produced by Felipe Castelblanco, Cartographies of the Unseen is an initiative born out of a participatory research process in the Colombian Pan-Amazon region.
The exhibition encompasses a multichannel video installation produced in collaboration with artist-filmmaker Lydia Zimmerman and presents Ñambi Rimai, an Indigenous Media Collective created in collaboration with members of the Awa, Inga, Kamnëstá, Quillasinga and Siona nations with support from Camilo Pachon (Ambulante Colombia).
In the spring of 2020, Lydia and Felipe embarked on a journey across ancestral territories in Southwest Colombia, conducting a counter-expedition from the lower Amazon to the high Andes. Along with members of Ñambi Rimai, the artists followed the course of the water as it morphed from a vast river into sacred plants and finally into ghostly clouds. Along this nonlinear journey, the water connects histories of abuse and dispossession, as well as intellectual re-evaluation and resistance across the various altitudes that it passes through.