Gabriela Bettini

In "Secondary Roots", the exhibition that the artist is presenting until June at the Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Sallaberry, she connects the settlement of European colonialism in Latin America with the beginning of capitalism in that region, and the current crisis of its natural resources with the development of botanical expeditions in the Caribbean since the 16th century, Bolivian mining or the industrial activities that have modified landscapes since the monopoly.

ABC periódico interviews artist Gabriela Bettini. "Art for me is essentially political. There is a lot of art that doesn't want to be political, but in that will it is already taking a position. Art is always a footnote to reality and serves to make intangible questions visible and to bring them to its terrain. Obviously things have to happen so that as an artist you have material to work with. It works both ways.

"All the paintings in the series are inspired by the American Museum of Natural History. I have been working for years on projects in which I am reviewing the history of art and painting and seeing how nature has been represented from a European point of view. The question is whether this way of painting and representing nature in Latin America has been able to strengthen the hegemonic idea that nature can be exploited without limits," says Bettini.

Zona de contacto puts in dialogue works of the most recent Bettini series: Primavera silenciosa, La memoria de los intentos and Paisajes de excepción, along with new pieces that continue their line of research on the capitalist manipulation of nature and the ways of resistance to this devastating process in Latin America.

Is there any specific violence against women who defend nature? With the intention of answering this question, the artist Gabriela Bettini has developed her work around a theoretical framework that explores “the link between capitalism and violence against women and towards nature”.

Artist Gabriela Bettini wins the International Prize for Plastic Arts "Obra Abierta 2017" with "Repoussoir", an oil on linen landscape. The intention is to "link two temporalities, such as colonialism in Latin America and neocolonialism to the situation of environmental crisis that exists in the present," says the artist. The jury of the Prize, convened by the Caja de Extremadura Foundation, is composed of former ARCO director Rosina Gómez-Baeza; the director of the Dos de Mayo Art Center, Manuel Segade; the director of the Ibero-American Biennial of Graphic Work Ciudad de Cáceres, Rosa Perales, and Susana Blas, of 'Metropolis' TVE program.