Abstract
This artwork critiques the commercialization of Indigenous knowledge and the contradictions embedded in narratives of progress. Featuring a stylized tourist advertisement for ayahuasca ceremonies emblazoned over a U.S. dollar bill, the piece exposes how Amazonian spiritual practices have been commodified, repackaged, and sold through a global wellness economy. The work reflects on what is lost, and what remains, when modernization arrives cloaked in promises of healing, development, and authenticity. It calls into question who benefits from “spiritual tourism” and at what cost, revealing the layered tensions between visibility, appropriation, and survival in the contemporary Amazon.
