Traducciones crudas | Crude translations

In the project conceived for the section “Nunca lo mismo” - Latin American Art, Balseca continues his research on extractivist dynamics and their environmental impacts on land, in particular those exploiting the Ecuadorian soil at the expense of indigenous peoples and benefiting Western oil companies.

The title Traducciones crudas | Crude translations refers to the Spanish translation of the iconic book Amazon Crude (1991), by the American jurist and political scientist Judith Kimerling. This publication became an indispensable legal tool in Ecuador in the 1990s, unmasking and denouncing, for the first time, the socio-environmental crimes committed by the Texaco / Chevron Oil Corporation, in the Ecuadorian Amazon territory, since its arrival in 1964.

The four tapestries revisit four “Collector’s Series” tractor prints issued in 1981 by ORTHO, a Chevron subdivision brand of agrochemicals until being sold to the Monsanto Company in 1993. The illustrations on these prints were first translated and reworked in watercolor drawings by the artist, and then transferred to large-format jacquards. In these new images plow tractors, sprayers, mowers and trucks are displaced from the North American fields and recontextualized in the former “Pozo Lago Agrio 06” (Nueva Loja, Ecuador), an area where the exube- rant vegetation seems to devour with its growth the agricultural industry. The image shifts from illustrating a peaceful relationship between the natural landscape and the machine that reshapes it, to showing vegetation taking control of the machinery of plant regulation and waste that modern petro-capitalism has left in its wake. On each tapestry the original captions describing the history of the depicted agricultural machine, fueled by Chevron oil, are replaced by legends highlighting the destruction brought by massive oil extraction.

Contemplating the tapestries on the walls are a group of plants, placed in the middle of the space, transplanted inside barrels that once contained motor oil. Next to them are benches, also made with barrels, wooden planks and bricks. This presentation is the result of another “translation”, that of Balseca’s Plantasia Oil Co. project, presented at the 34th São Paulo Bienial, which reflects on the unnaturalness of modern and urban garden. Here tropical plants — which have been adapted to live in apartments — oil containers, and other found elements have been transformed into museum seating furniture.