Color Amazonia
Introduction
Color workshop installed next to the house of a Huitoto family near Leticia, Colombia, 2007 - 2012.
In recent years, together with a group of friends, we have wandered around the Colombian Amazon in search of color.
With the ancestral knowledge of Huitoto and Tikuna communities as guides, we identified eleven
botanical species and the processes of alchemy that allow for the use of their pigments
in artisanal ways on natural fibers such as fique, cotton and paper.
Near the city of Leticia, we installed a rustic workshop to explore and understand these
manual processes in direct and close relationship with the environment: an encounter between basic
human nature that knows how to transform, and botanical nature, which provides amazing
possibilities.
Color Amazonia is the testimony of this elemental search where color is a pretext to exalt the immense value of a jungle that is disappearing.
Susana Mejía
Pigmentos orgánicos extraídos.
Pigments
Achiote
Bixa orellana
Palo Brasil
Simira cordifolia
Cudi
Fridericia chica
Chokanary
Picramnia sellowii
Huitillo
Renealmia alpinia
Bure
Goeppertia loeseneri
Amacizo
Erythrina cf fusca
Chontaduro
Bactris gasipaes
Cúrcuma
Curcuma longa
Llorón
Miconia prasina
Huito
Genipa americana
Hojas, frutos y tubérculos listos para convertir en pigmentos.
Extraction and dyeing
The extraction of color pigment from the eleven species used in this experiment implies similar
processes. It is necessary to macerate, grate or rub the part of the plant that produces the color: leaf, seed,
bark, fruit, skin, or tuber—as the case may be— subsequently adding water.
Depending on the plant, other steps or treatments such as exposure to heat (fire) or the use of
natural elements for the binding or transformation of the color, among them:
Water: dissolves color.
Fire: extracts color by boiling.
Lemon: natural catalyst that lightens color.
White clay: helps create pastel shades when mixed with pigments.
Alum stone: mordant, to bind the color pig- ment to the supports.
Proceso de extracción del color.
The Ritual of Color
Alberto Sierra
Indigenous people associate color with rituals.
In this project the rite has been sorted and recorded. The
ceremony is designed and planned so that together with
images and sounds, it becomes a work of art
that makes evident the importance of the process and
collective work.
This exercise discovers color palettes that did not
exist; among them the simple naming of
color—red or green— is not possible. The colors, their
variations and various nuances, appear thanks
to process and experimentation, trial and
error, the capricious filling and the slow drying, to
the music score and the journey. It is in this fashion that
color constitutes a product closer to science and
simultaneously a work of art.
The work in this book underscores the iteration of the natural
over a surface and the role of chance in the creative process. The
painting—and the actual color—invades the space; but without the
sound of the forest, plants, herbarium, documents, monotypes,
lose its charm, archives, and the moving image, it would because
the power of this work—it needs to be restated—lies in regarding,
lies in regarding the process of creating color as a ritual.
Wonder here is produced by the collective work, rather than by the
work understood as such. We are presented with an archival
artwork or laboratory, which easily oscillates between the
abstract to the expressionist, from the anthropological to the
botanical. Each color is a discovery, an opportunity to learn about a
geographic location. This work synchronizes art with communal
work and botanical knowledge, and in this manner, suggests
an artistic ecology. The color of the jungle istherefore recontextualized and redefined.
Indigenous people associate color with rituals. In this project the rite has been sorted and recorded. The ceremony is designed and planned so that together with images and sounds, it becomes a work of art that makes evident the importance of the process and collective work
This exercise discovers color palettes that did not exist; among them the simple naming of color—red or green— is not possible. The colors, their variations and various nuances, appear thanks to process and experimentation, trial and error, the capricious filling and the slow drying, to the music score and the journey. It is in this fashion that color constitutes a product closer to science and simultaneously a work of art.
The work in this book underscores the iteration of the natural over a surface and the role of chance in the creative process. The painting—and the actual color—invades the space; but without the sound of the forest, plants, herbarium, documents, monotypes, archives, and the moving image, it would lose its charm, because the power of this work—it needs to be restated—lies in regarding, lies in regarding the process of creating color as a ritual.
Wonder here is produced by the collective work, rather than by the work understood as such. We are presented with an archival artwork or laboratory, which easily oscillates between the abstract to the expressionist, from the anthropological to the botanical. Each color is a discovery, an opportunity to learn about a geographic location. This work synchronizes art with communal work and botanical knowledge, and in this manner, suggests an artistic ecology. The color of the jungle is therefore recontextualized and redefined.
Workshop.
Pigmentos sobre papel.
Paper
Paper.
Wallpapers with natural pigments in the drying process. Leticia, Colombia, 2007 - 2012.
Fique
Preparación de las fibras de fique y algodón para teñido.
Fique dyed with organic pigments in the drying process. Leticia, Colombia, 2007 - 2012.
Proceso de teñido del fique y el algodón.
Sounds
Acknowledgments