During the residency, Camacho Herrera will re-orient his research to explore connections between Southeast Asia and South America, especially in light of past and recent instances related to the economic exploitation of tropical nature.
Francisco Camacho Herrera
2 January - 29 March 2019
For the past several years, Francisco Camacho Herrera has been speculating on the possibility that Chinese sailors might have reached the Americas by crossing the Pacific Ocean before the arrival of the Spanish in the late 15th century. This inquiry resulted in Parallel Narratives (2015-18), a film that follows hidden trajectories and charts unexpected similarities between iconographies, utilitarian items, and ritual objects produced by geographically distant cultures. During the residency, Camacho Herrera will re-orient his research to explore connections between Southeast Asia and South America, especially in light of past and recent instances related to the economic exploitation of tropical nature. Understanding trade, migration, and natural resource economics as main propellers of development and cross-cultural encounters, the artist ultimately seeks to generate alternative narratives that challenge spatial, temporal, and geopolitical categories institutionalised in official accounts.
