Amazonia Açu, Americas Society | Page 22

means taking a stand, listening, recognizing, and proposing.
Amazonia isn’ t one Amazonia, but several. It is made up of rivers that flow in opposite directions, trees that rise from ancestral histories, peoples that carry ancestral memories and day-to-day struggles. It is a constellation of territories, cultures, languages, and cosmologies, the interlacing of which is determined by resistances that unfurl in the face of contemporary challenges. When we look at Amazonia, we must see it as a living organism, a collective body in motion, and not as the frozen image of an untouched forest. This prism stands as an invitation to unravel colonial myths and clear spaces for different epistemologies.
Each curator in this exhibition is one face of the prism, radiating their unique and indispensable perspective to help take account of Amazonia’ s immensity. Their voices, all rooted in different experiences— Indigenous, river-dwelling, urban, Afro-Amazonian, quilombolas, caboclas— do not compete with one
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