El Encanto, exhibition opening and reception
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
El Encanto is a new exhibition of work by the artist Freddy Dewe Mathews. The series, developed over the last 3 years, looks at the history of the rubber industry in the Putumayo, a large area of the Colombian Amazon once heavily exploited for this naturally occurring resource.
Developed from various trips made by the artist to remote and historically important sites, the show looks at how, at the nucleus of a spiralling and often paradoxical history, the essentially harmonious process of tapping - an interaction between a tapper and a rubber tree - has come to echo the central allegory attached to it, that of bleeding.
This is a collaboration between the artist Freddy Dewe Mathews and Dr Luciana Martins, with the support of the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS)
Freddy Dewe Mathews (b.1985) is a visual artist based in London. His multi-disciplinary practice considers the shifting influence of history on the environments and places we live in. Exploring chosen sites and guided by archival and research material, his projects have taken in broad subjects, ranging from the legacy of the rubber industry in the Colombian Amazon, to the cult of the ill in the Swiss Alps. He has exhibited internationally and taken part in a number of residencies in Europe and Latin America, including spending 2016 as Artist-in-Residence at Flora Ars+Natura and receiving the Gasworks International Fellowship in 2013. The same year he published his first book, Bouvetøya: A Cultural History of an Isolated Landmass. http://www.freddydewemathews.com
This event is free to attend, but please reserve your place using this online booking form.
If you have any additional access requirements please get in touch n.marquiss@bbk.ac.uk