Abstract
This painting relates to the territory by visualizing the ecological consequences of oil extraction in the Corrientes River region of the Peruvian Amazon. Against a bleak, industrial backdrop, the central figure—a fish whose body has been hollowed out and overlaid with oil infrastructure—serves as a haunting metaphor for the transformation of living ecosystems into sites of extraction. Oil rigs and skeletal fish float in a contaminated, grayish landscape, evoking both the death of riverine life and the disfigurement of territory. The work collapses the boundary between nature and machine, suggesting that industrial intervention does not simply operate on the land but consumes and reshapes it from within. Río Corrientes confronts the viewer with the silent violence of environmental degradation, where rivers once central to Indigenous life are rendered toxic and lifeless. The painting becomes a visual testimony of dispossession, bearing witness to the ways in which extractive economies alter not only ecosystems but the cultural and spiritual geographies tied to them.
Citation
Dantas, Nancy. 1992. 'Río Corrientes [Corrientes River]'. Dispossessions in the Americas. https://staging.dia.upenn.edu/en/art/APER073/
