ADRIÁN BALSECA (Ecuador, 1989) creates videos, photographs and installations that address socio-environmental issues resulting from extraction activities, especially those related to the history of the development of the modern state of Ecuador. Thus, starting out from seemingly distinct problems, he questions the alliances between technique, science, economics and politics, and the processes of domination involved in the birth of the New World nations. He was a member of the Ecuadorian collectives La Select and Tranvía Cero. He exhibited at the collective shows Energ(ética) [Energ(ethics)], Flora Ars Natura, Bogota (2017); Horamen, Museu Casa del Alabado de Arte Pré-Colombiana (2017). In 2015 he was awarded the Grants & Commissions Program of that year by Fundación Cisneros.
In the installation THE SKIN OF LABOUR (2016), a film projector screens 16mm footage of a rubber tree plantation in the Ecuadorian Amazon region. Latex harvesting vessels take the shape of a hand, a ghostlike presence of the historical relationships of exploitation in the region. Alongside the moving image, photographs and a glove question the key values underlying human exploitation of nature and reflect on the impact of the technification of work. Drawing on rubber harvesting, which lies at the origin of European colonization, as a guiding thread, the work underscores the colossal gap between a specific strand of collective imagination that relates the Amazon region to the idea of idyllic nature and the systematic practice of seizing this territory for political and economic purposes.
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