This online exhibition brings together the work of two of the projects funded whose artwork and films seek to remind us that indigenous people are facing two crises – the health crisis caused by the pandemic and the continued destruction of their environment. Indigenous artists and activists in the project 'Here' used paintings to document how Covid-19 impacted Peru’s Amazonian native and urban communities, the government responses, and indigenous strategies for survival. 'Here' focuses on the return of indigenous people to cultivate their lands, the shamans’ efforts to find medicinal plants in the forest and discover new treatments, and the right of indigenous peoples to defend their way of life. In The Other Pandemics the voices of five Amazonian activists from Ecuador are portrayed through sensory and visual language in the hope that their reflections will generate empathy and interest in the struggle they face in their different territories. These reflections, in 4 short films – Flood, Mining, Logging, and Spill –centre on community organisation, the ecosystem they inhabit, and what they dream of for the future.
For over a decade the Centre for Applied Human Rights has integrated the arts into research design, methods, data collection, dissemination and impact activities in fields ranging from transitional justice and rights-based development to human rights cities. In the project Arctivism in 2020 the Centre funded collaborations of artists and activists responding to the outbreak of Covid-19, and in particular its implications for activism and shrinking civic and political space. Where civic spaces have shrunk, art can provide an alternative venue for activists to broaden their movements and bypass traditional barriers that governments may erect in an attempt to stymie civil society activism.
Pippa Cooper, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York
All
This exhibition is open to all, and will be of interest to anyone concerned with the environmental impact of extractivism in the Amazon.