FAR

Artist Talk: Honoring the Mura and the Nukak: Past and Present
Inspiring us to preserve the Amazon Rainforest collectively
This talk is part of Relate: A Hispanic Heritage Month Exhibition

About Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo's Work

Between 2019 and 22, I traveled to Brazil and Colombia to photograph the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest that is changing the climate of the Earth. There, I worked in collaboration with the Mura and the Nukak indigenous people, who are resisting and acting to protect the Amazon from mega-projects that are destroying the vital rainforest.

In Brazil, I photographed the Mura Indigenous people, an ancestral indigenous community that has resisted deforestation from colonial times to the present. In Colombia, I have been working with the Nukak indigenous people, who have restored over twenty-one hectares (about fifty-two acres) of the biomass in the rainforest deforested for cattle ranching and coca leaf exploitation. The Brazilian rainforest, the most enormous swath of the Amazon, considered the ‘Lungs of the Earth’, is turning into a savanna and carbon dioxide emitter. Due to the fires set by land grabbers, the rainforest is releasing 0.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year. From 2019 to 2023, the Amazon Rainforest became the number one exporter of meat to America and the number one exporter of soybeans to China.

The images of this lecture and exhibition honor the indigenous fight and wisdom to protect the ancient forest for humanity’s survival on Earth. I hope these photographs inspire us collectively to preserve the Amazon rainforest.