This art display contains the work of 22 artists from around the world, who propose the reconstruction of great myths of the colonial era, through new critical views. In this way, the artists show that these myths, despite being outdated, continue to be reproduced. The exhibition invites the public to break with these great myths, thinking about new ways of building the world and new ways of relating, both with each other and with nature.

The exhibition is located in the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito, and was curated by Eduardo Carrera and Jorge Sánchez. The works of art on display are part of 'Dispossessions in the Americas: The Extraction of Bodies, Land, and Heritage from La Conquista to the Present' an interdisciplinary project designed to document dispossessions of land, embodiments, and cultural values in the Americas from 1492 to today. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $ 5 million grant to support this project.

Raíz (roots), evidences a critical vision of the position of the human being as the center of everything, thus, in the search for new narratives, the exhibition starts from three thematic areas: Displacements of the territory, The knowledge of the body and the meat and Wild gardens, with artworks produced from 1998 to 2021.

In Displacements of the territory issues related to human mobility are explored, where movement is questioned not only in physical space, but also in symbolic space, opening the door to new ways of conceiving territory and migration.

On the other hand, The knowledge of the body and the meat, works on the conception of the body, especially in relation to the multiple identities, the artists investigate new forms of representation of the body beyond the colonial heteropatriarchal binary.

Finally, in Wild gardens, the viewer meets the most hidden corners of nature, through works that show how devastating human beings can be with it, but also, what alternatives exist to care for and protect nature.

The artists that are part of "Raíz" are: Karina Aguilera Skvirsky (Ecuador / USA), Felipe Baeza (Mexico / USA), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Saskia Calderón (Ecuador), Sebastián Calfuqueo (Chile), Carolina Caycedo (England / Colombia), Gian Cruz (Philippines / Spain), Colectivo Ayllu (Transgressive migrants from the Kingdom of Spain), Catrileo + Carrión Community (Chile), Frau Diamanda (Peru), Arisleyda Dilone (Dominican Republic), Lucía Egaña (Chile / Spain) and Julia Salgueiro (Brazil / Spain), Camilo Godoy (Colombia / USA), Regina Jose Galindo (Guatemala), Kasumi Iwama (Japan / Ecuador), The Granddaughters of Nonó (Puerto Rico), José Luis Macas (Ecuador), Carlos Martiel (Cuba / USA), Joiri Minaya (Dominican Republic / USA), Lizette Nin (Dominican Republic / Spain), Daniela Ortíz (Peru) and Óscar Santillán (Ecuador / Holland).

For this exhibition the artists used a great variety of techniques in their works, we can find photography, video, performance, and various installations, one of them is The Cloaking by Joiri Minaya, who criticizes the use of tropical patterns as homogenizers of Caribbean identities. In this work, the artist creates original patterns based on ethnobotanical research, Minaya draws those plants that are used as medicine or in purge rituals, and draws them, following the same aesthetic lines as the illustrations for botanical catalogs drawn by the former colonists.

The Ayllu collective, on the other hand, makes an installation of several stations, which criticizes the western and heterosexual construction of the colonial project that began in 1492, a project that is still present today. The installation includes walls covered with collage images, some videos, and different lights, smells and sounds that set a space full of anti-colonial symbols.

We can find this exhibition until March 2022, it can be visited from Wednesday to Sunday, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito.