Within the thick foliage of the Amazon, coca leaves (acullico) pour forth from the thousands of shrubs that turn green, ocher, and yellow owing to the light penetrating the canopies. There, in the immensity of the shadows, powerful roots emerge—plants that, when ingested, cause alterations in states of consciousness, transmuting the perception of individuality, of being, and of the environment, reminding us that both the body’s inside and its outside are perceived and imagined at the same time. In this pictorial ensemble, Miguel Ángel Ríos presents a unique vision of himself via self-portraits that explore a fluid and constantly transforming “I,” which with each layer of paint ends up becoming unrecognizable, blurring the distinction between reality and imagination. In this sense, visual elements such as the face, the hat, and the scarf are configured in an amalgam of artistic styles, without any one element losing its own individual style within a composition that seeks to question the conventions of representation in a world governed by social media, and in which identity is characterized by being fixed and immutable. Apart from the light and shadows in Ríos’s visual landscapes, a range of colors is revealed that goes from dark to pastel tones. Fauna is present through lurking postures, operating as reminders, as with the ant that—with a subtle wink—recalls Operación Hormiga (Operation Ant), which is carried out by hand in order to pass coca leaves from one territory to another in southern Latin America, or with the figure of the scorpion that symbolizes a level of the unconscious, full of imagination and uncertainty. \- Mariana Camargo , Curatorial Coordinator Watercolor and acrylic on paper

Miguel Angel Ríos

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Miguel Angel Ríos studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires before moving to New York in the 1970s to escape the military dictatorship in Argentina. He subsequently relocated to Mexico and now divides his time between the USA and Mexico. In his work, Ríos pairs a rigorous conceptual approach with a meticulously constructed and often handmade aesthetic. Since the 1970s, he has made work about the concept of the "Latin American," using this idea as both an artistic strategy and a political problem. In the 1990s, he began creating a series of maps, which he carefully folded and pleated by hand. Marking the 500th anniversary of the "discovery" of the Americas, the maps indicate long histories of power and colonial experience, and they reference traditional Indigenous arts in the Americas, including the Andean quipu.