Gustavo Tabares. 'Charrúa'
Concluding the Paisatges Sostenibles (Sustainable Landscapes) programme 2015 – 2016, we present a sonorous installation by Gustavo Tabares entitled Charrúa. The piece by the Uruguayan artists rescues the voices of the indigenous peoples as a reflection on identities, transnationalities and globalisation processes using sound recordings. The work formed part of the Latin American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
Charrúas
Charrúas is the name by which we know one of the native peoples who inhabited the northern strip of the River Plate area when the Europeans arrived in the region. They occupied different territories throughout the colonial period, including both the present-day Republic of Uruguay and regions of southern Brazil and the north-east of the Argentine Republic. Over the centuries they interacted with the European and creole occupiers of the region, reaching the beginning of the Republic when, in 1831, the remaining survivors were attacked and exterminated or definitively cut down. A significant number of prisoners, in particular women and children, would be incorporated into the national society, continuing a process of integration and interbreeding.
Like other indigenous factions in the region, the Charrúas comprised an egalitarian society, structured in highly-mobile hunting bands that were numerically small, with tribes rarely reaching a number of greater than a hundred souls. They travelled in pursuit of game or according to conflicts with other groups, occupying different territories. Their weaponry consisted of bows and arrows, spears and projectile weapons such as bolas, typical of plain areas. Their main foodstuff was venison first, and then beef. Their structure was resized with the introduction of cattle and horses in the region; they became equestrian and their material culture and economy adapted to the new resources and times. Their very simple abodes were made of wooden sticks which were driven into the ground and supported a layer of rush mats followed by cow hides. The women in the group were in charge of transporting them and setting them up in each new location. The men devoted themselves almost exclusively to hunting.
Unfortunately, their early disappearance meant we were unable to become familiar with their language, and only a few isolated words or short sentences have come down to us, which are not enough to enable us to reconstruct and learn their tongue. As with nearly all the peoples from the region, their language was broadly influenced by Guaraní, to the extent that the very expression "Charrúa", by which this group of humans was known, is a term from this language: a derogatory name, actually, which the Guaraní used to designate these indigenous people with whom they frequently had a less than peaceful relationship.
(Text: Dr. Leonel Cabrera is an archaeologist and professor from the Faculty of Humanities and Education Science at the Universidad de la República, Uruguay. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Anthropological Science Institute. He is a professor of Pre-History and Ethno-history from Uruguay and a researcher of indigenous affairs.)
The work of Gustavo Tabares (Uruguay, 1968) has been characterised by a shift through different media in an attempt to generate a visual text on personal concerns based largely on researching contradictions in the concept of civilisation.
They are carried forward in the form of series and centre on representation and the tensions occurring within the consumer society, in the art system, in collections and archives, in things hereditary and identitary, in memory, in addictions, in popular religions and beliefs, in the culture of sex and taxonomy. The shifts take place in formal diversity: from painting to photography, drawing, sculpture, video, engraving, objects, sound, performance and literature. The visual texts are generally presented in the format of installations or interventions.
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