About the Project
The Earth system has now entered the Anthropocene, a geological age in which plantation monocultures, pollution, and industrial-scale resource extraction are damaging or destroying vital ecological systems on which the planet and its biological diversity depend. Due to our ethically untenable relationship to nature, the Earth system is in crisis. Moreover, large numbers of people who have done nothing to cause this crisis are most exposed to its consequences. Many come from cultural traditions that enrich and perpetuate healthy biodiversity as the means to ensure mutual flourishing widely recognised for their sustainable world views and sophisticated understanding of our interdependence within the Earth System. Today, Indigenous traditions are calling out to be seen, understood, and honored.
From this perspective, MINE: What is Ours in the Wake of Extraction presents artworks by the Etochime Harakbut artist collective from the Madre de Dios region of the southern Peruvian Amazon, an area heavily impacted by contamination from the illegal gold mining boom of the past 20 years. MINE also features works relevant to thematics of resource extraction by a juried selection of 10 international artists, alongside specimens from the Mineralogical Museum known as conflict minerals – mined resources that contribute to environmental harm frequently used to finance armed conflict and human rights abuses.
The exhibition is presented in collaboration with The ACEER Foundation, Amazon Aid, AWA and Studio Verde and was originally conceived by Patsy Craig.
Exhibition co-curated by Jon Cox, associate professor of art and design, University of Delaware; Patsy Craig, founder/director of AWA Galleria in Cusco, Peru; Sharon Fitzgerald, curator of the Mineralogical Museum, University of Delaware; Maisie McNeice, founder of Studio Verde, Italy; Amanda Zehnder, chief curator and head of Museums, University of Delaware.
The Use of Language in this Exhibition
Explanatory texts and object labels on this website are presented in both English and Spanish to reach a wide audience in the context of communities here in the United States and in Peru. The Indigenous language spoken by the Harakbut community is included here in the spelling of artists’ names on the labels for the works from the Etochime Collective.
Yésica Patiachi Tayori has provided the descriptive text for the Harakbut works.