Listen to the voice of Jaison Perez Villafaña (Arhuaco elder) as you participate in a guided exercise of deep thinking and reflection related to the concepts and works presented in this exhibition. (Spanish with English translation, 8 minutes)
This being, with ferocious fangs and bulging eyes, once stood guard at the entrance to a megalithic tomb in southern Colombia at a site known as San Agustín. More than four hundred stone sculptures remain at San Agustín; most are far larger than this one, measuring up to seven meters tall. Their sculpting, transportation, and final placement was an enormous feat of engineering. The majority of sculptures from San Agustín are hybrid beings, suggesting a fluidity between human and animal beings.
Birds populate the heavens and maintain the connection between this world and the spirit world. Feathers therefore bear strong magical capacities; when the human body is clothed in feathers, the mind gains the possibility of flight. Feathers also allow ritual specialists to gain contact with supernatural beings and utilize their powers. Shamans have the ability to leave their bodies to fly throughout the universe. Ritual items ornamented with feathers connect the shaman with his avian spirit helpers and contribute to curing sickness.
Plants nourish our bodies and minds, and the cultivation and consumption of plants both creates and relies on an intimate knowledge of them. Some plants are especially powerful. Tobacco, coca, hot chilies, manioc, corn, plants that produce pigments for body paint, and narcotic plants such as yagé and ayahuasca are considered as gifts from or even the embodiment of powerful beings.
Stone beads from ancient Colombia are widespread in museum collections and are commonly found in archeological excavations. Many Indigenous Colombians wear bead necklaces; the Kaggaba people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta additionally use them for divination.
Indigenous Colombians have rich textile traditions. Mantas—which were used as shawls as well as decorations for homes, tribute payments, and luxury gifts—were among the most valuable, inalienable possessions, and were required to be buried with caciques (rulers) when they died.
Materials valued by Indigenous Colombians are those that relate to the processes and cycles of life, such as feather, shells, and clay. Clay, for example, is linked to the earth; its transformation into ceramic wares through the use of fire is akin to gestation and birth. Quartz, which is translucent and seems to capture light, is used to connect with or hold creative thought.
The surface of rotating discs and other items produced in the Nariño area feature geometric designs made of gilded, polished areas alternating with zones that have been scraped or dulled through the application of salts and acids, or blackened zones formed through the oxidation of porous surfaces.
These thirty-three tunjos comprise an offering found by members of the public in the municipality of Suba, near Bogotá. The ceramic pot that held the pieces was found shattered. Ranging from yellow to nearly red, the variety of colors results from differing proportions of gold and copper in the alloy used to make the tunjos. They depict people, animals, and objects (including a basket, spear thrower, and jaguar pelt), with a predominance of women with babies, babies in cradles, and men richly dressed with ornaments and holding weapons.
A myth of the Uwa people relates that bees originally supplied the world with the elements essential for the emergence of life: honey, seeds, and yellow earth (metal ore). The beehive as a whole is associated with the uterus, and the process of smelting ore in a furnace to extract metal is considered comparable to the gestation of an embryo in the womb.