Alicia Barney Caldas

Gold Museum Project

 

HEKURA

The hummingbird came to me, finally

Marveled, I contemplated the dance.

I fainted to the ground

I was numbed when

he pierced my throat

and ripped my tongue.

I did not see how my blood

streamed to the river,

tainting the water red

He filled the opening with precious plums.

That is why I know the HEKURAS chants

That is why I sing so well.

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The Iramamowe vision chant.

Shabono, Florinda Donner

 

Artaud* asks

¿Am I condemned to never see things in the light of the chastity in which they were born?

 

I respond:

I have seen them thus in my childhood, when lifting a tangerine helmet against the sunlight, I had a vision of a magical color irrigated by nutritious veins, I would perceive a creator that permeates all things.

(Cosmic Code)

 

Years later, after a long journey, sealed by violence and displacement, I returned in search of my childhood to find it a myth, seeing once again a pre-Columbian Sinú nariguera (nose ornaments) also traversed by veins of fine gold filigree

(Historical Code)

 

Now I was capable of creating at the intersection of the visionary axis, a tangerine-nariguera ensemble, though apparently incompatible they are oppose like the mold and its cast.

 

A thing is not what it represents, but what it transforms, what it chooses to not represent, says Levi-Strauss.

 

Understanding identity as a world vision, known through acts and performances in daily scenarios (Sociological Code), it is more usual than embracing its many processes, letting the elements be seen (Natural Order) as they are transformed by culture into conscience of the essence of things.

 

The identity of a people that builds survival in complete isolation only would foster its ruin, thus I propose as an insignia of the Gold Museum a tangerine shaped fountain traversed of luminous filigree made of neon light (Invader Code).

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