Aycoobo learned his craft empirically and through his father, renowned painter and plant expert Abel Rodríguez, whose broad knowledge of the Amazonian landscape served as the foundations for elaborating on the worldview of the Nonuya people. The works presented in this exhibition address some of Aycoobo’s most pressing concerns: Calendario (2023) is a drawing depicting a monthly calendar that associates the passage of time with the conditions of the Amazonian forests in each month of the year. It also represents the agricultural processes of the chagra (a part of the forest organically used for growing crops), as well as the underwater worlds and the centre of the earth. Laguna misterioso (2022) presents a wise man emerging from a sacred pond, hinting at the interrelation between all species in the Nonuya cosmogony, structured by the law of origin and guided by ancestral knowledge. Vibración (2022), in turn, depicts an elder woman in a state of expanded consciousness brought on by using medicinal plants. Together, these works speak of what Aycoobo understands as a mandate: the transmission of knowledge and the creation of images that spring from a higher consciousness.
This is the first time the work of Aycoobo is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Emiliano Valdés
