Artist: Ana González

Sean Kelly, New York presents Bruma, Ana González’s first solo exhibition in New York. The paintings and prints on fabric in Bruma depict the flora and fauna of González’s native Colombia and represent the ecosystems under threat from industries seeking to exploit them for their natural resources. González’s practice opposes the disappearance of these habitats, not only warning us of what will be lost in their destruction but proposing new ways to relate to the natural world. Bruma engages with the vast ecological and human history of these landscapes encouraging the viewer to see our environment in a new way.

The works on view in Bruma were developed in response to González’s travels through the cloud forests of Colombia, an isolated region in the Andes Mountains which is both incredibly biodiverse – only an estimated ten percent of its species have been cataloged – and endangered by deforestation and climate change. In González’s paintings, the wax palms and other plants native to the Andes Mountains emerge from washes of white paint, referencing the mist that gives the forests and the exhibition their name. These landscapes reappear in the artist’s Devastations series, textiles onto which the artist prints photographs of Colombia’s vulnerable ecosystems. The monumental five-part work, QUIMBAYA offers a panoramic view of the cloud forest, capturing in monochromatic green the verdant abundance of the forest at an immersive scale. Here, as in all her Devastations works, González has partially unraveled the tapestry, disrupting the coherence of the image and physically representing the ravaging of these sites.

In her work González reflects upon the writings of 18th century German geographer and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, who revolutionized the way we understand nature by presenting it as an interconnected web of life. Humboldt observed, “If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel,” a metaphor that resonates powerfully with González’s work. Her unraveled tapestries poignantly embody this concept, suggesting that the destruction of even the smallest part of an ecosystem can threaten the stability of the whole. Devastations presents two possible futures for the ecosystems they depict: preservation and destruction. González asks viewers to see both possibilities at once – that while the abundance of life contained within these images is in immediate danger of being lost, there remains the potential for conservation if humanity reprioritizes its relationship with nature.

As much as González’s practice is concerned with the future, it is equally attentive to history. This is most apparent in González’s decision to title the works in Bruma in the language of the Muisca, the indigenous civilization that inhabited the Colombian Andes from 600–1600 CE. Referencing a pre-colonial past, the titles invoke the spiritual importance that the Muisca placed on the environment, implicitly contrasting them with our contemporary culture of accumulation and consumption. The large-scale tapestry ANGAPACCHA (“Powerful Waterfall,” in the language of the Muisca) spills off the wall and into the gallery space. According to Muisca specialist, anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, “Waterfalls were seen as places of origin, liminal places, doorways to the divine.” ANGAPACCHA performs a similar function within the exhibition, inviting viewers to engage with the natural world as a sacred space

González’s works in Bruma are at once a return to the past and a reimagining of the future, reactivating ancient ways of interacting with the environment at a moment when they are urgently needed.

Ana González is a graduate in architecture from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She pursued advanced studies in Art and Gender at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and completed a Master’s in Arts and Media, focusing on Photography, Printing, and Publishing, at both the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in France. Her work is part of significant private and public collections, including the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, the Havremagasinet Länskonsthall Museum in Sweden, the National Museum of Colombia, the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA, the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, NY, and the Museo de la Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. González has engaged extensively with Colombian Indigenous communities, implementing social and humanitarian projects with the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta communities, the Nukak people of Guaviare, and Misak women in Cauca. She is currently collaborating with the Amazon Conservation Team and Cartier to build a traditional healthcare house located in the Colombian Amazon.