arteBa 2018

Reacting against the insistence on sterile explanations and the exaggerated eagerness for clarification, poet and essayist Aldo Pellegrini titled his compilation of articles and conferences Contributions to the General Confusion (1965). Throughout the essays —at times lucid, at times feisty—he ponders the destiny of his intellectual exercise: to add to the governing, general confusion. Almost hopeful, never skeptic, Pellegrini insists that the goal of such an exercise is not to represent a new world order but to propose a ‘new disorder against the order.” He later clarifies (it is my turn to clarify that not even Pellegrini escapes clarifications): “it is a way to face the old disorder.” Below is a brief description of the contributions of some artists to the general confusion. Abel Rodriguez inherited his vast knowledge of the Colombian Amazon via the oral tradition of his nonuya and muinane lineage. For over twenty years, Rodriguez has lived in the city of Bogotá, away from his hometown, and has produced from memory detailed drawings of trees, animals, life cycles and transformation in the rainforest. The preservation of this ancestral knowledge is one of the most powerful motivations behind his drawings. […]

– José Luis Blondet (curator)