Nicario Jimenez
Mixed Media
Traditional retablos are small wooden boxes filled with hand-carved figures arranged to tell a story. Nicario Jimenez’s powerful Water Festival tells the story of climate change as seen through the eyes of a rural Andean mountain community.
As mountain snowcaps melt, rivers run dry and soils harden. Devastated, the agrarian community gathers to beseech the mountain spirits (Apus) for protection from the ravages of drought.
Hand-carved with a simple wood tool from a mixture of boiled potatoes and gypsum powder, Jimenez’s retablo focuses attention on the life-threatening predicament of agrarian communities far from the citadels of power where climate policy is made.
All materials in this exhibition are copyrighted. ©Open Space Institute, Inc./Honoring the Future 2021. Please respect this copyright and that of the artists who generously contributed images to this exhibition.