Tania Candiani

Geometrías de la resistencia (Geometries of resistance) alludes to facial paintings used by women belonging to Amazonian tribes in different rituals.

These paintings, which are originally inspired by designs present in nature, such as patterns in the feathers of birds, plants or felines, are appropriated by the artist to create masks that function as presences and echoes of the jungle.

If nature is understood as a subject, with the qualities of a living being and with rights like any human, these masks speak to us of the gaze of the jungle, which is witness to its own destruction.

For the artist, these pieces, which are between the ritual object and modern painting, are testimonies of the presence of nature among us.

During the recent riots in Hong Kong, protesters used facial makeup similar to that of native Americans, to protect themselves from state forces’ facial recognition cameras. From this historical anecdote, which seems to be taken from a dystopian futuristic novel, it is possible to trace an interesting relationship between ancestral technologies and their validity in contemporary times.