Unlearning and relearning to coexist with a fragile planet at new Amazon rainforest exhibition

Climate change is already wreaking havoc on the planet, and many scientific studies show that if the Amazon rainforest is destroyed, it could take all of human civilization with it. 

The planet's temperature and climate depend on a well-functioning Amazon rainforest, and its biodiversity, cultures, and the challenges it faces are the subject of a new exhibition here at the CCCB In Barcelona. 

Claudi Carreras, the exhibition curator, called the exhibition "a dialogue" with the rainforest. 

The Amazon spans nine countries, is home to over 30 million people, and is the original habitat of around 400 indigenous peoples who speak over 300 languages. 

The exhibition seeks to break from the Western colonial understanding of the world and defends the profound knowledge that the indigenous people of the Amazon have of the nature that surrounds us all. 

Carreras tells Catalan News that one of the goals of the exhibition is for society to "unlearn certain things" about itself and the world.

"We have to start new processes of learning because our processes are bringing us to the verge of collapse," he explains. "Ours are processes are based on constantly extracting from nature, they don’t view nature as something we’re a part of."

This new exhibition is a sensory journey through the sights, sounds, smells, cultures, and communities of the world's largest tropical ecosystem.

Carreras is the chief curator, but he points out that he worked with nine other artists and curators from different parts of the Amazon, while artworks from around 90 Indigenous artists and collectives were commissioned specifically for the CCCB. 

With an aim of moving away from "a folkloric or fatalistic vision" of life in the Amazon, the exhibition invites visitors to think about ourselves as a society, about the fragility of the environment, and about the urgent need to recover more respectful ways of living on this planet.

Working on this exhibition has changed the life of Carreras, he admits, as says he has had to "unlearn" many things that he says have been imposed on him and replace them with "a new way of understanding the world." 

"I had forgotten that I, too, am a part of nature," Carreras says. "When you see that everything you do has an impact, you start to think about this relationship with the environment. I've learned we have to change how we're living, to create a new way of doing things much more respectfully 

Amazons. The Ancestral Future is open in the CCCB until May 2025.