Illustrations for the indigenous people circuit “ABYA YALA” of the Archeology and Historic Park 'Santa María la Antigua del Darién'
Illustration
Client
Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia ICANH
Tools
Analog and digital (graphite and Photoshop)
This is a series of illustrations I made for the “Indigenous Circuit” of the Archaeological Museum located in Darien, a jungle region between Colombia and Panama. The circuit is dedicated to the stories shared in the meetings of the indigenous peoples in the Circle of the Word, a very important space for sharing knowledge and resolving conflicts between them. The narratives -both real and mythological- of the Gunas and Emberas peoples are represented in the illustrations, and the process of collecting the stories reinforced the sense of community of these peoples, as well as giving them the opportunity to represent their memory in images and share it in the museum.
1. THE CIRCLE OF THE WORD
The Circles of the Word are very important spaces, because throug dialog, knowledge sharing and storytelling, people that inhabit these lands - in this case the Darién territory-, build together a sense of community, and strength the bondings between towns.
2. CUEVAS - Archaeological pieces
Some of the pieces exhibited in the museum, represented as deities of feminity and nature.
3. CUEVAS - Settlements
Representation of the indigenous settlements that were found in the Darien region before the arrival of the Spanish, with its more representative flora and fauna species
4. THE GIRL AND THE WHALE
This image is based on a story - which I personally find beautiful - from the Guna people, which tells about the creation of the Unguía swamp in the Colombian Darién. The story goes like this: a twelve-year-old girl falls in love with a young whale, and begins to learn their wisdom. Eventually they married and joined to live together. She learned to float and live in the water, in the dream she sailed and travelled. But a wise man warns that this was not good for the village, because the partner (the whale) was not from the Guna community. During a celebration, the village starts to be surrounded by whales and water starts to flow from the walls of the houses. Everything is flooded, and so the Unguía (Arquía) swamp is created...
5. VILLAGES IN MOTION
The map displays the Emberá territories and their continuous displacement in western Colombia based on their testimonies.
6. THE BAT KING
6. CUMBARRÁ AND THE BANANAS
In the past, the Cumbarrá bird - the oropéndola - was an indigenous person, he owned a lot of banana plants but never shared the fruits with other people. A god punishes him for being selfish, turning him into a bird, because ‘the mean becomes a bird’, And that’s why cumbarrás like to eat ripe bananas. From that time bananas were born for everyone.
7. EMBERA WOMEN FROM ‘CUTÍ’