Adriana Bustos
El mar y sus múltiples afluentes
2018
El mar y sus múltiples afluentes (The Sea and its Multiple Tributaries), 2018
El mar y sus múltiples afluentes (The Sea and its Multiple Tributaries) builds on the concept of trafficking that Adriana Bustos has been exploring over the last decade. The piece represents an apocryphal river and illustrates the routes of the slave trade between the coasts of Africa, Europe, and South America, departing from the Congo River (once called Zaira), and arriving at Río de la Plata, the main river in Buenos Aires that divides Argentina from Uruguay. The work collapses time and space, placing the coasts of colonial empires across the colonies where slaves were taken.
Adriana Bustos creates a narrative discourse through installation, video, photography and drawing, in which her reflections on prevailing social, political or religious oppression appear in non-linear interpretations of history. The investigative and documentary nature of her work challenges so-called historical facts by drawing from ideas taken up in areas of anthropology, science, popular culture, fiction, biographical writings and history itself, and juxtaposing them within representational systems.