Fabiano Kueva is the winner of the 15th Cuenca International Biennial

BASIN. Fabiano Kueva is the winner of the Cuenca Biennial with an installation that he put together in ten days, but has previously researched it for a decade. His work Ensayo geopoético Alexander von Humboldt 2011-2021 recreates a personal concern about travel diaries, but inspired and influenced by the book Travel to the equinoctial regions of the new continent.

This text written by Humboldt in 1799 caught his attention for its “discursive game”, says Kueva, since the paragraphs were narrated in the third person and in the plural and he is frequently cited as “we”.

He admits that at first he thought of making only one video, but then, when he started the same journey as Humboldt (half missing), began to replicate travel techniques, such as journaling, mapping, taking measurements, and creating a herbarium of the places visited.

With these elements, what he raised before the Cuenca Biennial was an installation that after the curatorship was placed in the Remigio Crespo Toral museum, in an open room where the construction itself and the local nature converge, a place where the trees and the Tomebamba river can be appreciated.

What the visitor will observe are the evidence of the trip placed inside wooden display cabinets; samples of the rivers visited, including the four in Cuenca; and, at the end, an hour-long video in which he scrolls backwards, where it is observed that certain landscapes described in 1779 by Humboldt in a “romantic” way do not exist today due to deforestation or drought.

He considers that the axis of his project fit well with the concept of the Biennial, called “From the biocene, change green for blue”Well, there was already a connection because the fusion of nature with culture or technology was addressed.

And although this project has already been presented in Mexico, Berlin or Lisbon, it executed something exclusive for the city with elements from the area, such as Cañari archeology and Andean herbs.

As a contemporary artist, he believes that one of the most important factors is that the work is understood and enjoyed by all citizens, generating a local identity, because “if the public cannot decipher what one is trying to say, one is speaking for oneself” .

But despite his unique and artistic perspective, Kueva invites viewers of his work to take their own inner journey to raise awareness of the importance of conserving water or plants in the midst of their daily activities.

What’s more, In the current context of the pandemic, in which there is a global public health crisis, art helps channel the coexistence between humans and non-humans to go to the root of the evil that generates an imbalance. And presenting this in a museum is to question that “many times cultural fetishes are more cared for, which have a lot of economic value”, but nature itself is not cared for. “It is a paradox to have a very good museum of an Amazonian or coastal culture and that its people, its beliefs, are destroyed, full of resorts, of things that destroy and make it impossible for them to continue ”.

He concludes that he does not want to moralize anyone, but to ask questions to see what is not seen. What happens if a river stops being? Questions that today I think are obvious, but that after several decades change the weight of humanity. (I)

Given:

Fabiano Kueva is an Ecuadorian artist, curator, producer and cultural manager born in Quito in 1972. He obtained the First Prize at the 3rd Latin American Radio Biennial (Mexico, 2000) and the Paris Prize at the 9th Cuenca International Biennial (Ecuador, 2007); He also participated in the 10th Havana Biennial (Cuba, 2009) and the 2nd Montevideo Biennial (Uruguay, 2014).