exhibition
Dulce Chacón, Gravesend / At the Forest Edge

About the exhibition

Lady Moody settled in 1643 with her Anabaptist community in what is now known as Brooklyn, New York. Banished from England for considering her religious beliefs dangerous, she migrated to North America and named this place Gravesend, known as the first founded by a woman. The community allowed religious openness for settlers who wanted to occupy the land that originally belonged to the Lenape nation. Their gender condition as well as the need for adaptation originated a mestizo thinking that shaped the personality of the current community.

This anecdote describing the founding of a town is the starting point for this exhibition that brings together pieces that review my recent production. These works are oriented to the visual documentation of historical events and collective memory, exploring the interaction between the natural and the symbolic.

The beings that are located at the edge of the forest are those who are on the margin of human settlements and need proximity to dialogue with non-human entities. They are the mediators with nature and fulfill the function of acquiring knowledge of the chemistry and physics of the elements, both earthly and cosmic, they are creators of fantastic worlds whose careful observation has founded science through travels, experiments with the environment and with the matter of which we are constituted. Some of these discoveries were made possible by the concerns of unknown people from marginal lives who insubordinated themselves to the official discourse in order to preserve empirical knowledge, transmit it through generations and adapt it to the needs of the future generations.

Gravesend / at the forest edge is an exhibition that documents through the language of drawing practices of cultural exchange, censored knowledge, hidden and constantly reinterpreted through image and orality, expressions that shape our contemporary culture in constant construction.