Nicario Jimenez

Mixed Media

Nicario Jimenez, The Water Festival. Retablo. ©Nicario Jimenez 2020. Mixed media. Courtesy of the artist.

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.