Starting with the speculative image of a hand digging in the ground, Earthly Communities critically reflects on the impact of European colonization in the indigenous territories of Abya Yala, the ancestral name by which some original peoples refer to Latin America, and does so from the 15th century. The group exhibition, on view from June 22 to October 12, 2025 in the spaces of Kunst Meran Merano Arte in Merano, is developed as the third chapter of the three-year research project The Invention of Europe. A tricontinental narrative (2024-2027). Curated by Lucrezia Cippitelli and Simone Frangi, the exhibition brings together artistic positions from the American continent and its diasporas.
The works address in a decolonial key the ways in which human intervention has acted and acts on the environment: from agriculture to urbanism, from archaeology to resource extraction. What emerges is a tight critique of the colonial and modern vision of “nature” produced by the West, understood not as a subject of relationships but as an object to be exploited. Using visual, installation, performance and filmic languages, the artists in the exhibition reflect on ecological and colonial rifts that, according to Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, manifest on both sides of a violent process of laceration, the consequences of which remain unpredictable to this day.
Mbembe’s vision of an earthly community, which is based on a horizontal and profound relationship between humans, animals, plants, objects and spirits, constitutes the theoretical reference of the project. This idea implies a restorative practice that recognizes the original as an integral part of the present, and invites us to imagine forms of coexistence outside the hierarchical logics inherited from imperialism. The selected artists confront social structures that continue to be shaped by centuries of colonial and neo-imperialist domination, dwelling in particular on mechanisms of appropriation, possession and control.
In particular, her recent series Agua, Walking the Vacilón River (2024) examines historical narratives related to colonial oppression, taking as its point of departure an imaginary river, the Vacilón, which symbolizes the migration movement between Colombia and Venezuela. The water becomes a metaphor for the forced mobility, emotional tensions and social conflicts that run through the present. In Gelis’ work, the environmental dimension takes on political and cultural significance, and the natural element is a bearer of historical memory and resistance.
The exhibition project also includes works by Minia Biabiany, Marilyn Boror Bor, Carolina Caycedo, Luigi Coppola, Etienne de France, Mazenett Quiroga, Eliana Otta, Amanda Piña, Sallisa Rosa and Samuel Sarmiento. The public program associated with the exhibition also includes performances by AMAZON, Ismael Condoii, Alexandra Gelis, Amanda Piña and Luigi Coppola, and film screenings signed by Laura Huertas Millán, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo and Eliana Otta. Earthly Communities is thus configured as an opportunity for confrontation between artistic and political practices, territories and memories, indigenous knowledge and contemporary criticism.
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| Earthly Communities: the exhibition investigating the colonial impact between Europe and Abya Yala |
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