Born on the banks of the Cahuinarí River in the Colombian Amazon, Rodríguez—whose Indigenous name, Mogaje Guihu, means “shining hawk feather”—was one of the last members of the Nonuya people, whose population was devastated during the “rubber holocaust” that took place in the region between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Raised by his mother’s family, he was trained from childhood as a sabedor: a knowledge keeper capable of identifying and naming every plant in the rainforest, understanding its practical and symbolic uses, as well as the web of relationships connecting plants, animals, people, and territory.
Rodríguez began drawing around the age of forty, translating into images forms of knowledge embedded in Indigenous languages that could not be rendered into Spanish. Over the course of three decades, he produced nearly five hundred works—in watercolor, gouache, ink, and acrylic—that reconstruct the Amazon rainforest from memory, tree by tree and leaf by leaf. In these drawings, the density of the forest never becomes an undifferentiated mass. Instead, it unfolds into a range of greens discernible only to an eye trained in the rainforest. Each work is signed with both of his names, Mogaje Guihu and Abel Rodríguez, marking a boundary between two worlds while also suggesting the possibility of their harmonious coexistence.
Organized by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.
Top image: Terraza, 2018. Private collection. Terraza, 2018. Colección particular.
