Surfacing — The Civilised Agroecological Forests of Amazonia.
Installation at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale The Laboratory of the Future
Authors: Estudio A0 (Ana María Durán Calisto and Jaskran Kalirai) and Manuela Omari Ima
Collaborator as a researcher and fundraiser.
Maps of ancestral territory embroided in Wengo and ceilling structures weaved in One fibers by the Waorani communities of Tiwino and Tepapade in collaboration with students from the Yale School of Architecture.
From the catalogue:
"Gold prospecting using LiDAR in the twenty-first century has brought to the surface not only vast mineral deposits but also evidence of mega-regional cities. The digital whispers of these cities forcefully speak of the civilisations built by the people of the Amazon River basin tributaries for over five millennia.
The land of the ‘savage’ portrayed by the European conquest through Greek mythical beings and medieval legendary monsters are now being portrayed by remote sensing as the land of interwoven constellations of agroecological urbanisms that call for a new name, for an ontological reckoning.
The civilisations of oral traditions are wanting of recognition, not as exotic urbanisms to be marginally included in history textbooks, but as brilliant, working examples of urban ecology that may lead our way into a reconciliation of the city, its foods systems, and its hinterlands. This is the focus of this exhibition."
Spring 2023
