Curiwarmi, meaning “woman of gold” in Quechua, is the protagonist of Where Did the Creatures from the Forest Go?, a science fiction story that feels strangely close to reality. In this narrative of climate migration, the spirit of the forests rescues her from the Amazon rainforest fires of 2019 and asks the omnipresent Amazon River to guide her toward another shore beyond danger. Its waters carry her to Germany, England, and eventually back to Peru.
Carrying a long braid, woven textiles, and a feather structure, Curiwarmi patiently moves through these territories. Her struggle is meditative and restorative: she sings to heal spaces damaged by extractivism, uses weaving as an act of warmth and protection, and walks through landscapes to acknowledge that their wounds are real. Her journey challenges our own understandings of territory beyond the limits imposed by the nation-state.
The story unfolds through photographs and videos that sketch landscapes shaped by the neoliberal desire to exploit nature for private gain. In Germany, she emerges from Lake Markkleeberger, a former open-pit coal mine flooded in 1999 and later transformed into a tourist destination. In England, she visits the White Horse of Westbury, a chalk hill figure that was covered in concrete in 1957 in an attempt to reduce the maintenance costs required to preserve its fragile silhouette.
In Pucallpa and Contumazá, she listens to stories about the importance of weaving and leads collective weaving sessions whose results are presented in this exhibition. Water collected from different rivers across Peru appears throughout the installation as a reminder of the complex relationship we maintain with this element. Hydrometeorological crises and declining water quality are, and will continue to be, central causes of climate migration.
Curiwarmi’s story reminds us that recalibrating our relationship with natural spaces is a slow process that requires travelling lightly and maintaining a lasting commitment to abandoning inherited attitudes that wrongly place us at the center of the universe.
Gisselle Girón Casas
Curator of the exhibition