6 pm reception
6:30 pm forum

This forum will focus on the responses of artists to the Colombian landscape and their desire to document specific aspects of the natural world in personal terms. Artist Monika Bravo evokes the places where she has lived by intertwining the contemporary and ancient technologies of video and Arhuaco weaving. Curator José Roca and Monika Bravo will talk about the varied interpretations of landscape in the Waterweavers exhibition and the artist’s process of retrieving cultural memory and recording its loss. Art historian Georgia de Havenon, co-curator of the exhibition Unity of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas (on view at Americas Society), will discuss the impact of Humboldt’s scientific ideas on earlier generations of landscape artists in Colombia.

Monika Bravo, born in Bogotá, Colombia, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been presented at numerous venues, including the Sternesen Museum in Oslo; the Museo de Arte, Banco de la Republica in Bogotá; SITE Santa Fe; and the New Museum in New York.

Georgia de Havenon is an independent scholar and research associate in the Art of the Americas department at the Brooklyn Museum. She is co-curator, with Alicia Lubowski-Jahn, of the exhibition Unity of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas at Americas Society.

José Roca is adjunct curator of Latin American art at Tate Modern in London and artistic director of FLORA ars+natura in Bogotá.

The exhibition Unity of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas is on view from April 29 through July 26, 2014, at Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, New York City.