Abel Rodríguez, more than an artist

Abel Rodríguez, more than an artist, a wise man of Amazonian plants
The artist is honored in the book of the Great Masters of Colombian Art of this 2024.

Abel Rodríguez is an artist, a great draftsman especially of the native plant species of the Amazon, his native region. The name with which he was born is Mogaje Guihu, in the Nonuya community, which means 'Resplendent Hawk Feather'. Abel is also a displaced person due to violence, who more than three decades ago arrived in Bogotá with all the knowledge of an ethnobotanist and with a few coins in his pocket that ran out after a few days.
Possessing ancestral knowledge of medicinal plants, their healing properties and the ecological systems of the Amazon basin, he approached the NGO Tropenbos International, which from the Netherlands promotes the protection and proper management of tropical forests in the world. It was more of an idea of survival, but without realizing it, Abel would begin to 'draw' his knowledge in order to transmit and protect it.
"I had painted very little before, and when I first started, it was ugly. But the important thing was to go with my thoughts, with my mind, to the jungle from where I talk and name. From there I write down the colors, smells, where they are located, what animals eat them and when worms come out. Translating it is not easy, there are many names that I know in my language but I don't know how to translate them into Spanish. The paintings help me to translate without words, to communicate my mind and show in a way that people understand," says Rodríguez himself in an article from the Cisneros Institute research project 'Linking the sacred: spiritual currents in Latin American and Caribbean art of the 20th century, 1920–1970', which is reproduced on the official MoMa (Museum of Modern Art in New York) website.
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The art of Abel Rodríguez, born in the Igara Paraná River in 1941, and whose linguistic family is Bora, one of the five languages in danger of extinction in Colombia, is the protagonist of the most recent edition of the book of Great Masters of Colombian Art, published annually by Davivienda and Seguros Bolívar.

His work has been featured in important events such as the São Paulo Biennial (2016), Documenta 14 in Kassel (2017), the Toronto Art Biennial (2022), the 23rd Sydney Biennial (2022), the Gwangju Biennial in Korea (2023) and the Venice Biennial (2024). In 2014, he received the prestigious Prince Claus Award, given by the Netherlands for his work and his special ancestral connection with nature, and his work is part of the collection of the Tate Modern, in the United Kingdom, and of Cornell University and the Kadist Foundation.
The book that has just been published compiles Rodríguez's drawings since 2006. In addition, it includes an interview with the voice of the master; an essay by the curator of the Hammer Museum, Pablo José Ramírez; a poem by the Mexican writer and poet Gabriela Jáuregui, and a text by the director of Tropenbos Colombia, Carlos Rodríguez. Additionally, this document has the stories of the “Myth of Creation” and the “Myth of Abundance” of the Nonuya cosmogony, narrated by Wilson Rodríguez (Aycohobo), son of Abel and heir to his legacy.
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