Abel Rodríguez: Between Planting and Painting

Abel Rodríguez is a sage of the Nonuya people, who live in the Amazon rainforest. He is known as a “plant namer” because of his astonishing ability to remember the wide range of vegetable and animal species that inhabit his native La Chorrera. Having lived for a number of years in Bogota, Colombia’s capital, he tells us about his relationship to the rainforest, now mediated by memory, word, and image. The text below is based on two conversations with Abel Rodríguez that took place in January and April 2024.

This feature is presented as part of the Cisneros Institute’s ongoing research project Bridging the Sacred: Spiritual Streams in Twentieth Century Latin American and Caribbean Art, 1920–1970, which invites artists and specialists from Latin America and the Caribbean to explore modern and contemporary art in relation to spirituality, with a particular focus on Afro-diasporic, Indigenous, occult, Jewish, and Catholic traditions.

Translated from Spanish by Jane Brodie
Este artículo está disponible en español.

Abel Rodríguez

I feel my way when I speak and I feel my way when I paint. I see the palm tree in my mind’s eye, and I make its roots, trunk, bark, buds, branches—I make them in the air and on paper. A process of remembering, but also of guessing the words, of feeling my way to them—it is from there that things are born. You ask me in what ways are painting and planting alike. They are not alike. You do not eat, or produce, or grow in painting; you just look at the fruit—that’s it. The word, though, is the basis for how the chagra¹ is created and the world administered.

Here in the city, I don’t farm the land anymore. I would plant the chagra in my village, Araracuara, in the Amazon. There my name was Mogahe Gihu, which means “shining sparrow-hawk feathers.” When they registered the inhabitants of the region in 1959, we had to choose a Spanish first and last name. They gave me the name Rodríguez after a boss my father had, but I have no idea what it means. I was a curious boy. I paid close attention to the mamo² who knew about plants, animals, and words. Eventually, they started calling me a plant namer. My knowledge is not biological. It is materially, spiritually, and sentimentally connected to the rainforest, to its energy.

Excerpt from the documentary El nombrador de plantas by Simón Hernández, 2023

At a certain point, those “nice guys” came to the jungle to do away with life. Since they wanted to be there in the forest, I thought I would go to the city in their place. So I came to Bogota almost 30 years ago—that’s why I am, now, more cachaco³ than anything else. The little money I brought with me didn’t last long, so I went to Tropenbos.⁴ I had worked with them before, showing them the forest. They knew I was a plant namer, so they told me I had to make the plants on paper. And so I did.

I hadn’t painted much, and at the beginning nothing came out right. It looked ugly. But what mattered was going to the forest in my thoughts and mind, and speaking and naming from there. Once I am there, I write down the colors and scents, where they are, what animals eat them and when they rot. The translation is not easy—there are a lot of names I know in my language that I am not sure how to turn into Spanish. The paintings help me translate without words, to communicate what’s in my mind, and to show it in a way people understand.

Abel Rodríguez. Las plantas cultivadas en la chagra. 2021

If you don’t speak my language, it is hard to explain how the forest and farming work. The word touches everything, and that is why using the word is called “handling the world.” The word is a technology that acts on the globe and determines how it operates, how it moves and changes. To talk is to go around the world in thoughts and words. When I lived on the reservation, before we planted we would sit down to mambear⁵ and talk about the sowing, about how to create the chagra, and about how farming creates people. Because the word comes from the beginning, and food comes from it and from it alone. Then that piece of forest we have borrowed, the chagra, turns back into forest, and it grows back stronger. This is not gibberish; everything has been part of that story with which the world began. Those stories also have their forms and rules: they ensure there is enough to eat, that food heals, and that what is good is always given back. That knowledge is with you before you are born. It was not only passed down to me; it comes from the source itself.

And I follow that story when I make the plants in the air and on paper. It might not produce fruits, but it does provide me with sustenance. I make a nice living from what I paint. I don’t want for anything, and I laugh and enjoy myself. I can also travel with my family to the different exhibitions I am in. They call me an artist, but I don’t know what kind of an artist. We don’t have that concept. In my language, we speak of knowledge, work, intelligence, and craft—that is what is behind images. Art? I don’t think so.

Abel Rodríguez. Las matas que se ciembra en la chagra son tuverculos. 2017

Remaking plants in my drawings reminds me of the passing of generations, of having a child. We call our thoughts children—spiritual children who are always with us. You try to capture that figure or harvest the same as it was before, but it will never be the same. Everything changes every day; on some days there are more and more fallen leaves and roots—their living form changes. You might want the drawing to look like the real thing, but it will never turn out the same. It has to change in some way, just like children, who come from you but never turn out just like you.

The city’s food and plants are not like the forest’s, but they can feed you. If fertilizer is copied or has chemicals in it, it will hurt you. No matter how hard you try, you cannot copy things. If you copy something, whether a plant or a drawing, it will come out worse. But if you try to be respectful and let things grow in change, they will come out good.

These are the things I have learned. That is how I understand them, and so this is how I said them. I, for one, am always the same figure. I translate things in the same voice and with the same words. That is how I show them: the good and the bad, the dangerous and the difficult. When everything is spread out, displayed before the whole world, it loses physical energy. So it is also good to keep things in your mind, heed that knowledge, and lead a healthy life.

As told to Juaniko Moreno