\Antonio Paucar
Maria José Arjona
Naufus Ramírez-FigueroaIn/Tangible
curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill11.06. - 30.07.2016

Antonio Paucar’s new video performance The Purge with the Mothers of the Plants, 2016 was born from his experience with medicinal plants from the Amazon and the Andes. Specifically from his recent experience in Quechua-Lamas. As Paucar points out, in the Amazon indigenous people coexist harmoniously with plants and nature in general, and they heal themselves with dieting, bathing with medicinal plants, and purge. Purging is about cleaning the body from negative energy, and toxicity. Paucar explains: “The purge is on the one hand the path to healing, to liberation, and on the other hand, a profound reconciliation with nature: with animals, with water, with the virgin jungle (sacha monte)”. Purging takes place in the form of vomiting and evacuation; bodily phenomena that are seen as abject and negative in the Western world. In The Purge with the Mothers of the Plants, the artist proposes a criticism to colonialism, and the polluting effects of consumerism. Through The Purge he proposes alternative ways of thinking, where human and nature can coexist. He does this by reversing what may be seen as of negative value in the Western world and bringing new light into it. Thus a toad is not a toad – an animal with bad connotations, but a metaphor for the conciliation between humans and nature.