Ariamna Contino: Manigua

In her first solo show in Madrid, Ariamna Contino revisits the concept of “manigua,” whose etymological origins can be traced back to the Indigenous Taino language. Historically, this term has been used in Cuba to refer to a tropical forest ecosystem specific to the Caribbean. The primitive meaning of the word is “disorder; abundance of something; confusion.” The artist presents an exhibition in the form of an extended essay in which she combines common knowledge, historical documents, traditional medicine, aesthetic reflections, and a vibrant process of interdisciplinary work. Her creative corpus finds installations, drawings, site-specifics, and oeuvres made on hand-cut paper. In its cultural sense, the exhibition focuses on the rite, identity, and myth. Contino is interested in drawing attention to resistance exercises within popular culture as a space for safeguarding the collective imagination and the political potential of unregulated knowledge.