Whilst We Are Savages

Whilst We Are Savages proposes a reflection on the ways in which colonial modernity constructed figures such as the savage, the barbarian, the Indigenous person and the peasant, and on the ways in which these imaginaries continue to shape how we understand territory and identity. Taking the Canary Islands as one of the earliest settings of Atlantic colonisation, the exhibition situates the archipelago within a space of dialogue between Europe, Africa and Latin America from which to address questions such as the representation of alterity, the ways in which knowledge is produced and its relationship to structures of power, extractivism, and the circulation of colonial imaginaries.

One of the project’s main points of departure is the thought of the Canarian anthropologist Fernando Estévez, whose research demonstrated the extent to which apparently naturalised figures of island identity, such as the Guanche and the mago, are the result of complex processes of cultural construction. The Guanche—the Indigenous inhabitant of the Canary Islands— was imagined through the same devices through which Europe represented other Indigenous peoples, whilst the mago—the historical figure of the Canarian peasant— was defined as the internal other of island society, associated with the rural popular classes and later transformed into a folkloric emblem of Canarian identity. Both figures reveal the extent to which identities are also the result of processes of representation, negotiation and contestation.

The exhibition develops a methodology of reading rather than a closed narrative. Artworks, documents, images and objects from different periods coexist in order to trace the trajectory of particular imaginaries—the savage, the barbarian, the Indigenous person, the peasant— and to observe how they reappear, are transformed or persist in seemingly distant contexts. This movement across time and geography makes it possible to understand anthropology, archaeology, museums and visual culture not only as spaces of knowledge, but also as sites where ways of representing the other are produced and contested: apparatuses through which forms of power, classification and representation are organised.

In this sense, the exhibition also considers the persistence and transformation of forms of knowledge, memories and cosmologies that have survived colonial processes and that continue to offer other ways of understanding territory, history and community. Rather than reconstructing identities defined by colonial narratives, it proposes recognising the continuity of presences, forms of knowledge and ways of relating that never entirely disappeared, even when they were rendered invisible or displaced. From this perspective, Whilst We Are Savages opens up a horizon of shared futures that does not begin from a single identity, but from the coexistence of multiple ways of knowing, relating to one another and inhabiting the world.

Curators: Alejandro Castañeda, Néstor Delgado, Katya García-Antón, Roberto Gil, Narelys Hernández, Joel Peláez, and Sergio Rubira.

Artists: Sergio Acosta, Eileen Agar, Tarsila do Amaral, Diana Anselmo, Jesús Arencibia, Otto Auer, Colectivo Ayllú, Ernesto Baena Jover, Sammy Baloji, Yto Barrada, David Baute, Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, Roger Casement, Teresa Correa, Minerva Cuevas, Luis Diego Cuscoy, Raven Chacon, Ali Cherri, Maya Deren, Tahíche Díaz, Dias & Riedweg, Alfred Diston, Lucía Dorta, Margaret D’Este, Patricia Esquivias, Shabely Estévez, Javier Estupiñán, Álvaro Fariña, Coco Fusco, Sandra Gamarra, Tony Gallardo, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jorge González, Pedro de Guezala, Philippe Haas, Paula Heredia, Martin Herzberg, Susan Hiller, Héctor Hyppolite, Mrs. R. M. King, Abdoulaye Konaté, Wifredo Lam, Richard Leacock, Lecuona y Hernández, Lehnert & Landrock, Talles Lopes, Rogelio López Cuenca, Miró Mainou, César Manrique, Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre, Claudia Martínez Garay, Carla Marzán, Ana Mendieta, Jane Millares, Manolo Millares, Kent Monkman, Felo Monzón, Manuel Montes, María Belén Morales, Carlos Motta, Nicolás Müller, José Otero, Eliazar Ortiz, Daniela Ortiz, Alejandro Ossuna Saviñón, Lena Peñate, José Antonio Pérez Cruz, La Chola Poblete, Man Ray, Rosângela Rennó, José Alejandro Restrepo, Gumersindo Robayna, Rosario Miranda, Miguel Rubio Tapia, José Ruiz, Miriam Inez da Silva, Olivia Stone, Lía Tavío, Colectivo Tizintizwa, Leonardo Torriani and Diego Vites.