Emilio Chapela takes as a starting point for this exhibition the idea of rivers as agents that order the diverse forms of life. Through videos, installations, paintings, photographs and images generated by artificial intelligence, he presents the concept of tributaries», highlighting the way in which the artist’s different, apparently unconnected, investigations converge and make sense within this body of work, revealing an underlying idea: that we are all feeding a n intricate network of relationships and consequences.

In this sense, the exhibition stands as a conceptual analysis that highlights the vital interdependence between the inert and the animated, the ethereal and the concrete. The rivers are revealed as the anguished witnesses and silent narrators of a scenario that Walter Benjamin’s Angelus Novus would observe with regret.

Chapela addresses the environmental crisis from multiple perspectives, combining philosophical and historical thinking with critical analysis of programming, the internet and artificial intelligence; scientific and anthropological research with the denunciation of the pollution of rivers and other bodies of water in Latin America —the product of mega infrastructure projects based on an already archaic idea of development.
Images, seemingly innocent, of birds, rivers and landscapes, reveal a clear denunciation. «Afluentes» (tributaries) is presented not only as an artistic manifestation, but also as a call to awareness and action in the face of the emergency.

Sofia Mariscal