Roberto Uribe Castro

The installation »Seringueiros«, consists of several sculptures spread out across the floor in front of the viewer’s feet. Made of ground automobile tires of an intense black color, the sculptures take the shape of buckets, some of which are tilted and some cracked. In this image order and chaos coexist simultaneously. The title »Seringueiros« (Portuguese for rubber tappers), borrows the name given to the workers in the Amazon jungle who obtained rubber from thin incisions made in the bark of the rubber trees. Seringueiros refers to the exploitation of indigenous communities and their territory, as well as the devastation they have suffered in the name of what the West called progress. Roberto Uribe Castro investigates the persistence of colonial testimonies to this day in the territories and the communities that have been victims of exploitation and violence. He uses materials that link our daily life with forgotten historical events. Part of the image of the half-destroyed buckets refers to the reports written by Roger Casement, an Irish diplomat in the service of the British crown in the beginning of the 20th century. He exposed the abuse that took place as a consequence of the rubber industry in the Congo and the Amazon in what is known today as the »Casement Report«. Uribe Castro uses recycled material of car tires, ground and separated into their different components in an industrial way, trying to retell a history marked by exploitation and environmental pollution.

The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. Edited by Angus Mitchell
El sueño del Celta. Mario Vargas Llosa.
La Vorágine. José Eustasio Rivera
Eva y las fieras. Antonio Ungar
One River. Wade Davis
The Trial of Roger Casement. Fionnuala Doran