The “golden myths” of El Dorado survive in the “American dream”

The myth of El Dorado, the golden kingdom hidden in the indigenous lands of America, survives in the different values ​​that today feed the “American dream”as suggested by an exhibition that opens this Wednesday in NY.

“El Dorado: myths of gold” brings together at the Americas Society dozens of works of art and historical objects from the pre-Hispanic period to contemporary times, many made by indigenous artists, to offer new interpretations, raise critical questions and, in short, “Complicate” and review the legend.

The exhibition is the result of a “very broad effort among a group of artists, curators and intellectuals in Latin America, North America and Europe”, and more than giving explanations, he wants to open the concept of El Dorado as a destination to debate “necessarily unattainable”those responsible explain to EFE.

“We say ‘gold myths’, in plural, because there are not only the myths of El Dorado during the first period of contact and the colonial period: we see how El Dorado has been transformed, just as alchemy tried to create gold from other materials , in rubber, in oil (or) in lithium…”says the chief commissioner, Aimé Iglesias Lukin.

“It is a warning about the mistakes of the past so that we try to change them in the future, and to think about ourselves in America,” adds the expert, who in this context describes the “American dream” as “an input in the different extractivist moments, with different materials, on the continent”.

The city of gold has been transformed, suggests the text that welcomes the visitor in the institution’s gallery, into “more intangible, although equally powerful, personal and collective values, such as individualism, greed and consumption, central to contemporary capitalist societies.”

The tour begins with two figurines from the Quimbaya civilization (located in what is now Colombia), from between 600 and 1,400 BC, and a mask from Lambayeque (north coast of Peru), between 900 and 1,100 BC, examples of gold objects with sacred weight and coveted by the conquerors.

Also noteworthy are several engravings by the Belgian Theodor de Bry that portray the first European expeditions to the Americas and maps with which the colonizers guided their trips, one of them with the supposed location of Lake Parima, where El Dorado was believed to be.

History is interspersed with recent times in pieces of a political nature, such as a golden United States flag, the work of Mexican Rubén Ortiz Torres, which represents “a golden cage” and criticizes the “consumerism that many migrants seek to achieve by arriving here”explains associate curator Tie Jojima.

Or the golden floats of the Dominican Scheherazade García, with labels from the JFK airport, which evoke “the current migration crisis, whether people fleeing the Mediterranean or the Caribbean”says New York University History professor Edward Sullivan, also an organizer.

The Brazilian indigenous artist Moara Tupinambá shows, through surreal photographic collages, scenes of “apocalypse” that show the degradation of nature and serve as an omen of what can happen when the craze for gold, in its classic sense or in its new forms, clouds the senses of modern explorers.

It also reflects that “fragility” of the Earth by the Brazilian Laura Vinci, with sculptures in the form of golden tree leaves that decorate a wall, and that invite us to reflect on how the “Western culture values ​​gold much more than nature.”

Fifty pieces, including paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures and videos, make up this exhibition, the first of two parts, carried out in collaboration with the PROA Foundation of Buenos Aires and the Amparo Museum of Puebla, and which will be complemented with a series of public programs, including an academic symposium.

Source: EFE