Opening: Sunday September 28th, 3 p.m The word subtle—from subtilis—combines sub (under) and telis (cloth, weaving), alluding to the finest threads running beneath the warp. The title of this exhibition draws inspiration from the image of those underlying threads that speak about interdependence between territories, between humans and Earth, acknowledging the spatial and temporal entanglements that make both human and more-than-human existence possible. It calls attention to silenced stories and complex relational fabrics that resist and escape from the reductionist approach of “land as resource”. Extractivism, as a development model in modern societies, is more than only an economic activity of extracting “natural resources” or “raw materials” a particular way of understanding and relating to land. Macarena Gómez-Barris (2013) explains the 'extractivist gaze' as one that transforms human groups, minerals, water, and trees into “natural resources, reorganizing territories, populations, and both animal and plant life into extractable data for material and immaterial accumulation.” To Admit a Subtle Thread emerges from the need to pause at that moment of transformation, dislocating the dominant definition of nature as a resource for human use. Which other historical, affective, political and spiritual ties to land have been denied and rejected under the dominant extractivist-capitalist approach? The exhibition brings together works by artists from various regions of Abya Yala (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) who, in addition to denouncing extractivist practices, share alternative understandings and ways of relating to the land. Their works reveal a radically relational existence which is shaped by historical, spiritual, emotional, political and temporal ties with earth.
Far from romanticizing interdependence, the exhibition brings the complexity, devastation, reciprocity and struggle of non-extractivist approaches, honoring the lives and work of all those who resist and have defended coexistence and care for other living beings. * The exhibition To Admit a Subtle Thread is part of BIENALSUR 2025 as an associated exhibition.