Creating in the middle of war: the damages and resistances to the knowledges and the illustrated creative trades from the effects on the Eastern Tukano, Nukak and Jiw in the Guaviare

Abstract

The damage caused to the knowledges and creative trades is still a pending category when relating the damages produced by war. From an intersectional perspective, this article has as an objective to engage in a reflection on the effects of the Colombian armed conflict on the knowledges and creative trades of indigenous communities, where armed violence is deepened by the persistence of historical patterns of discrimination and cultural domination. This article has three reflexive, research and creative axes. Initially, it makes evident the void and the need to reflect on the damage caused to knowledges and creative activities by the armed conflict. Next, it presents some clarifications on how the dichotomy of art-crafts has been a domination device which has affected the indigenous communities and their creative labor. For this reason, their plastic creation is mainly framed within the framework of handicrafts. Afterwards, some hypotheses are developed on the damage caused on the trades and creative knowledges of the indigenous communities in the midst of Colombia’s armed conflict. Finally, through an exploratory exercise, some of the affectations inflicted upon the Nukak, Tucanos and Jiw indigenous communities of the Guaviare are made evident, in ethnographic stories and intervened photographs. In these exercises the discussion around the changes, losses and resistances in the creation dynamics and transmission of creative knowledges among generations, in a context of uprooting, fragmentation, intimidation, domination and resistance, is opened.