Below is an account of my time on a residency with La Wayaka Current in Armila, Panama on the border of Colombia living in the rainforest in the Darien Gap with the Indigenous Guna Yala community. I would like to start by firstly thanking the Guna community for letting me share their home for three weeks in the most magical of places. I would also like to thank La Wayaka, the other artists and my collaborator Emma Elliott.
Firstly, I will reflect on the most significant parts for me in relation to my research and practice. I was interested in the resourcefulness and intuitive way the people use materials for building. I tried to make sculptures using similar methods of weaving plants and tying natural materials that the people of Armila use to make shelters and buildings. For a long time, I’ve been interested in this idea of adaptation in my practice and how humans, in my practice I consider the way we intuitively wrap, stack, tie and slot materials together around us. It was an interesting challenge to make work in such a remote area without bringing in tools or much in the way of materials.
I was inspired by the colour, geometry and pattern of the Molas (traditional stitching to make ceremonial dress) which informed the print work I’ve been making in response to the experience.
I found it fascinating to learn about the systems in place and how they are adapting to the changing landscape and protecting the environment. This was because of my interest in how societies function, systems, and alternative societies in relation to sustainability. One example of where climate change is having an impact is the coastal erosion due to the location of the rainforest. In Armila the issues because of climate change were also balanced with a lot of hope with regards to how they have managed to adapt to living in such a remote location with extreme weather and an abundance of water. I feel this can offer an optimistic example of how other places could use it as a model to fight climate issues. There was also a lack of understanding about materials that aren’t natural causing issues such as large amounts of rubbish on the beach where their public toilet is situated and in the other direction where the turtles lay their eggs. We talked a lot about how we idealise societies like this and they in return idealise globalised societies thinking it creates progress. Perhaps what we really need in today’s times is less progress and to slow down?
There were issues in this part of Panama around the migrants which are increasing with climate change, I’m interested in my practice in the idea of mapping, changing borders and migration. Walking has been a focus for several years now within my work as a tool for understanding place and as a process to make artworks themselves.
The next thing that was inspirational for me was the plants- the mythology behind them, their structures which is something I focus on a lot in my practice and use the formal qualities of plants as inspiration for sculptures. The plants’ colours which inspire print and the colour choices of my sculptural works. The botany and their medicinal use was also something that I hope will be conveyed in the video work I am making in response to the trip.
This experience was intense and extraordinary, one of the most incredible and memorable.
Now for a longer account:
Flying from Panama City to Armila in the tiny ten-person plane, all we saw was untouched jungle and the sea. Only a few areas where it had been cut down were visible. The Guna Indigenous people have autonomy over the region and have managed to preserve it for hundreds of years. I found this ability to preserve the environment something immensely important. I offset the carbon for this trip but as a result began thinking a lot about the issue of this. I try to fly less these days and offsetting can help but do a lot of us just use it as an excuse to consume more? The people in Armila were saying that big companies want to pay the Panamanian government for protecting the rainforests to offset their carbon but it’s really it’s the Guna people who are doing all the work.
The botany and kinship with plants was interesting. I was fascinated by the way that the botanist learns what the plants do. We were told a story about their ancestors once seeing a snake get bitten by another and then they ate a particular plant and they realised that it had anti-venom. They also showed us a beautiful plant that folds in on itself when you touch it, they realised that this is good as a relaxation tool. Apparently, the botanists are the only people who go to the garden in the sky when they die. This experience helped me to form a deeper understanding of the significance of plants which are a recurring theme within my practice.
We saw trees that had slices taken out of their bark with a machete to make medicines. This way of cutting preserves the tree but allows for enough to be taken to be able to be made into a medicine. We tried a root medicine called manusuala, we had to take it for eight days in a row and abstain from alcohol during this time, it was meant to make us stronger.
Every day the humidity meant that there are lightning flashes even if there aren’t storms. One of the molas we saw was inspired by lightning due to increased storms because of climate change. The storms mean the water supply can be cut off and routes in the jungle become more treacherous as trees fall and then paths get blocked, so people must hack through to find other routes. This way of adapting to uncertainty seems significant in the context of climate change and I wonder what other examples there are around the world of best practice in terms of this.
The relationship between electricity and light is something I comment on in the neon works I have made over the years. Surprisingly the solar power we had was working well in the hut in Armila. There must be a lot of power in the community as they play loud music all the time. One of our guides showed us the place where the internet tower had been put in 6 years ago. He said it changed everything for better and for worse. Again, this idea of progress comes up. Is it always a good thing? I’m interested solar power but also in critiquing some of the technology behind it. For example, a lot of solar panels use destructive materials in them that are contributing to destroying the planet. The endless issue comes up of the difficulty in materials that might last longer and or be less hazardous at their end of life but that use more energy or are more harmful to produce in the first place. How can we get the balance right in the materials and processes we use? How can I as a practitioner consume less and have my making processes have less impact on the planet?
Since returning from the residency I have used printmaking as a tool for exploring the colours and forms found in the plants within the Guna Yala. This is a multi-layered monoprint.
Something particularly related to my research was the relationship to water in Armila. A lot of my work and research interests focus on this element and I was being somewhere where there was such an abundance of water had an impact on my thinking around this resource. It’s interesting that a lot of indigenous communities around the world are known for not thinking of the natural world as a resource but rather as the kinship they have with nature. I felt I formed a deep relationship with water during my residency, in particular with the river but also the different bodies of water around me.
Panama is the rainiest country in Central America and all the jungle is preserved as it helps with the water supply and the water for the canal comes from there.
The local people believe the river to be a medicine. However, there is a huge problem with plastic pollution. Children drag large pieces of polystyrene from packaging to use as a float, little pieces of it flaking off and floating away. The plastic washes up or is from the villagers. They used to say the river washed everything away and put their waste in it as it was organic but now it’s not biodegradable and it’s causing such problems. The turtles get stuck within it when they hatch on the beach or get distracted by it trying to lay eggs. I found this contradiction tricky, as if it’s truly a medicine then the idea of polluting it is problematic.
We walked along the beach looking for turtle tracks. We came across some big ones and found a large turtle. 1.5 x 1.10 m shell, just about to lay her eggs. We could watch with red lights near her and saw her lay and then she spent ages covering up the eggs. We were told that she does this twice a year and that they take 3 months to hatch. She lays a lot of eggs in one go. Apparently, there are 20,000 turtles left in the world. They can grow to bigger than her around 2m and you to 180 years. We think she was about 60 years old. They are the biggest in the world. It’s local people’s jobs to monitor the turtles and they go all around the world speaking of the conservation. Two children joined us on the turtle watching trip but seemed more glued to their phones than watching this prehistoric like animal in front of us. She was distracted going back into the water and seemed distressed, they wouldn’t move out of her way. I found this deeply sad to witness. We left her and came back later, to see her walking into the sea.
We also saw fireflies, dolphins and heard the ray gun frogs and monkeys. I read there is more biodiversity in Panama than in the US and Canada combined.
One of the first things I noticed when we arrived was also the coastal erosion, the palms falling into the water and the exposed roots along the shoreline. The children play by jumping from the falling trees or grab onto the palms as they bend over the river. A playful act but also a very sad sight to see. Like a lot of things in Panama and the world, I felt torn between its beauty and the exact opposite.
I bathed using a Tortuma in our huts and swam every day, either in the Caribbean Sea with the powerful crashing waves and the strong unpredictable current that always served to remind you of nature’s power or in the river. When we swam in the Caribbean where the waves were calmer, we saw that the coral reefs are dying, we read about it often but seeing it has far more impact. I wondered further about how can we protect our oceans?
Swimming where the river meets the sea was an interesting sensation, floating down the channel in the river that was fast flowing and visibly different to the rest of the body of water, like a pause point where it meets and collides into the current of the sea and pulls you in different directions, sometimes so much so that you feel trapped and unable to go back onto the beach. You feel powerless and small facing such strength of nature.
The one body of water I didn’t swim in was the Rio Negro where the caimans live. The river is named the black river as when a tsunami hit many years ago it cut it off from the rest of the river and as a result it’s less fast flowing, with palm trees falling into the water. It looks prehistoric and post-apocalyptic, like a paradise scene where the world has ended in a JG Balard Novel. It’s why I like sci-fi as it gives us hope, showing how people still continue to live in the most extreme environments.
We went to visit the aqueduct, to see where the village gets their water. It is so abundant the only time it is a problem is when there has been a storm and the pipes get blocked. There’s so much water that the pipes often leak halfway up and squirt out water constantly but there’s no urgency to fix it. We could swim in the water but below where the fresh water was taken.
At breakfast one morning I noticed the filtered water we have in the central house is a life straw like my flask. It is great to see how what I purchased could be directly helping societies. I wonder what it must be like to be in a similar community but without the abundance of water from the rainforest. People here seem very healthy and one of the reasons they have been able to keep their autonomy is because of the resources here but slowly the infiltration of global society and the processed foods from the globalised world have brought a lot of illnesses and worse dental care as well as the pollution. This issue of progress keeps coming up and reminding me of the famous quote by Jameson that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism.”
On the first day that we arrived in Armila we were told it was a coincidence that there was a special surprise that evening. We were later informed that it was a ceremony, and we were invited but we weren’t allowed to take any photos or to record sound. I’ve tried to capture it the best I can anecdotally.
The women and men would be in separate halves of the congress house and that all women in the community had to go and had to dress in traditional dress but for the men it was optional.
We were invited to wear their traditional dress called molas with sleeves attached, a wraparound skirt and a scarf headdress. The molas were beautifully stitched by hand, geometric patterns made through the process of reverse appliqué.
A bell rang to call everyone to the congress house. We went inside and sat down, given small hard shells from a fruit called a tortuma. The men began to chant in circles in the middle of their space and to drink from large tortumas. There were two fires in the middle and a large pole to protect the urns of chicha (traditional drink) at the front of the space. Men kept going to the fires and setting fire to a tree root and coming around and putting it above the heads of the women who were sat in front of us. We were told they were the family of the girls that the chicha was for. The family host the event. The men would blow into the root releasing clouds of smoke over the family.
On the women’s side a group of women would come around, showing us the content of their tortumas, then they would begin to come round and pour it into our cups, then they would drink. This would keep going with rounds and rounds of them pouring it in.
At a halfway point everyone got up and started making their way to the river. People bathed and then went back to the congress hut. More rounds of the drinking happened, dancing and chanting took place on the men’s side, with pipes for music. Then the girls who the chicha was for were brought in, completely covered from head to toe in material including their faces. They stood and offered chicha in a tortuma for a line of people waiting their turn.
When a girl gets her period, she spends seven days in a room. The men oversee cutting banana leaves used to obscure the girl’s room. During the week the women bring her water. There is a canoe inside the space, and they fill it with water for her to bathe. After seven days two people look for crabs from the river which are placed in a tortuma. There were so many crabs near the river and beach and frogs at night you would nearly trip over when walking home to the hut.
They check to see if the crabs have died after two days. If the female dies it means her marriage will not last. If the male dies it means the husband will leave her alone. If they are alive, she will have a happy marriage. At the end they are cooked for the girl. Before leaving the hut, she is painted in black with Hagua (dye from a plant) which is the symbol of purification and is a medicinal plant.
One morning we walked past the congress hut and saw some urns outside, they were being washed with a solution of mint and water. We were invited inside to see how they made the chicha. There was a long strip of fire with eight vats and eight people sifting the chicha in sync, alternating from side to side like a pendulum or one side going and then the other in rhythm. They were sifting it to get the foam off it using woven baskets made from palm leaves on long sticks. The image above shows this.
It was very hot in the hut. We were told the whole community gets involved and do different shifts. We were offered some of the chicha before it was fermented to drink and tried it. You could taste the sugar cane and the cocoa.
The second Chicha was a surprise, and we were lucky that we were there for two. It’s quite rare to experience two so soon. It happens when the chicha is ready around the dates for the girl’s significant parts of her life. The same happened again with the clothes and the initial drinking rounds, however this time two little tents had been set up with fabric inside the hut, smoke was coming from within. At a certain time, the babies were brought in by the grandmothers to the sound of pipes, being held in banana leaves. The joy on the grandmothers’ faces as they danced around with them was so evident. The babies were then taken into the little tent dens and apparently their nose is then pierced and when the rest of the congregation hears their cry, they know the ritual is done. Again, everyone bathed, and the pipes followed them to the river before many more rounds of the chicha. The parties would last for three days straight. The video work i’m creating with Emma Elliott tries to convey this loss of control witnessed and experienced during the chicha with spinning motions and falling performance. Perhaps we need to lose control or become lost in order to find ourselves again?
The day after the second chicha, a man came up to us outside the white House, he was crying saying in Spanish that his mother had died. Not everyone spoke Spanish, some only Guna so it was interesting to try to connect with minimal language at times. It was the grandmother of a boy I’d become close to in the village and I’d been giving crayons and paper to for the duration of my stay. The children loved to draw and seemed to play properly without much screen time.
Later that morning I heard pipes from a house, I think it was the family preparing the body. We were told that it was the family’s job to help to get them ready for the funeral. A few days later the funeral took place, we were told we were invited and in such a small community of 800 people that it was a sign of respect to attend and popularity if you had a big funeral.
In a small hut her body was being kept, there were candles inside. It was an open casket, and people were going to pay respects. She was brought out, the coffin was on two long sticks of bamboo. The procession started and the grandson held my hand the whole way to the funeral. I kept telling him in Spanish that he was strong and checking he was okay. He just kept repeating that his grandmother was dead.
We walked through the cemetery, at another grave a few people sat around tending to it. I think that because someone else had died most recently it was a sign of respect to be there that day and that everyone tended to their family’s graves on the day that there was a funeral. When we arrived at the burial site, the grandson ran off to be with his family.
The coffin was visible, the top of it slid away to make it an open casket. Women were wearing the headdress they wear for the chicha but over their head completely and they were bending over the coffin and wailing loudly. This went on for quite some time. A large mound had been made next to a very large hole in the ground. The Guna people believe that being buried is about going back to the pregnant Mother Earth. She was then lowered into the hole in the coffin and then four darts were used to pin her hammock to the coffin. The soil was filled in and then her worldly possessions placed on top of the mound. There are woven plants and protection plants placed all around the graves.
IIt was really interesting to experience this event which was far from the sombre funerals in the UK, with such a release of emotion that was almost cathartic. Again this sense of collectivity and loss of control came up.
Materials and surfaces became significant to my research in Panama as a way of understanding place and thinking about the intuitive way of working with materials, soil erosion and the difference between the human made and natural marks. I began making rubbings of the textures I could find.
One day after breakfast we went to get clay from near the river for our work. It was an amazing spot in the jungle where the water was so clear. The marks below made by turtles as shown below inspired this alongside the surfaces around Armila.
One of the things that most struck me about my time in Armila was the migrant situation. The Darien gap is known as one of the most inhospitable journeys in the world. Migrant numbers have been increasing because of Covid and situations like in Haiti and Venezuela. Apparently just 10 years ago, around 200 migrants would go through the jungle a year. They were mostly from Cuba and would go unnoticed. Now it is around 11,000 a month and whilst we were there about 100-200 a day would pass by Armilla and sleep in a camp across the water. My mother grew up in Venezuala so seeing so many people coming from there felt particularly close to home to me which got me thinking about why it needs to feel close to home at all. So many of us know these issues are going on but we don’t do anything to help. I wondered what more I could do.
There is an armed guard right outside our hut: apparently, they are there to protect the community and to help the migrants. This was quite daunting at first but something you get used to quickly on a strange way.
One of the guides was explaining that we are so close to Columbia and that it is possible to go by boat but that the whole area is quite dangerous and uncertain. Recently in Colombia they locked down the town to try to regain power from the drug trafficking gangs in the forest who wait to pray on migrants and who cause the region to be uncertain.
I wonder what this migration issue is going to be like when climate change gets worse. When more of the land is uninhabitable, more and more people will have to move. Why do people keep building their homes again and again on land that floods? Will we all end up being climate refugees? Do we need to rethink how are borders work, forming a more fluid way of living to address this?
Often the migrants would have very little in terms of equipment with them, they would be walking in shorts and t-shirts, with a small bag and the gum boots. From experience although the gum boots help with the water in the jungle and the mud, they are not at all easy to walk in for long distances. On days where it had been raining, they would arrive covered in mud, with just small thin ponchos over them or drenched with water. This was so hard to see daily and not something we had been forewarned about far in advance. I wondered why so many don’t stop in the first country they come to that offers a better life, why does America and its land of freedom and the UK have such a draw. I read up more about this and lots do stay in countries they reach first unless they have connections to that country. For example, Germany and France take far more refuges than the UK, but it often doesn’t feel this way in the news in the UK. The American land of hope and joy rhetoric must be a strong draw for these people. Surely everyone is deserving of a chance at a better life, regardless of where they were born. In the UK we are most likely going to end up needing other places to live ourselves so this attitude seems so short sighted.
Initially I thought by the time the migrants got to us, they had completed the most difficult part but then I was told that they had been walking for two days or so at that point- some walk without stopping much and some stop. Apparently, the harder bit was to come as it gets much more mountainous. They are guided by locals (nicknamed Coyotes).
The jungle is so difficult for many reasons, they are much less obvious than if they were to travel by boat, which would also be dangerous but because the jungle is so dense it also hides many other dangers. Firstly, the environment, the humidity is often over 80 percent, the heat around 30 degrees, at night the mosquitos are worse, there are deadly snakes, spiders, frogs and man-eating cats like jaguars and pumas. Then there are issues with the water, it rains so much that the rivers are often fast flowing, routes must change sometimes as they become impassable, and they must hack through different routes in the jungle which can make this disorientating. Trees fall and make the paths difficult and when it rains it becomes incredibly muddy. The mud is exacerbated because of so many people walking on the same tracks and can sometimes be up to or above knee deep. The rain is often so heavy it makes it difficult to walk.
It wasn’t just adults trying to cross, sometimes it would be small children or women with babies in a sling. I’d bonded with the children in the community during the time I spent there, we drew together and made artwork every day, they played with such joy in the river and around Armila so it was in stark contrast seeing these children trying to cross.
One day coming back from the other side of the village I saw a man collapsed on the floor. He was desperate for water so I gave him what I could from my flask, and he drank it fast. He said he couldn’t go on and couldn’t walk anymore. We told him the migrant camp was just a few minutes’ walk away and he said it was just so difficult. He was covered in mud. We realised he was blind. He couldn’t tell if I was his friend or not or see where his bottle was. His friends came up and seemed quite cheerful, they were from Africa and had been living in Brazil. We helped them to get to the migrant camp and told them they would be looked after, all the children said hello on the way.
It started to rain whilst saying goodbye. I wished them all the best for their journey, after they left, I burst into tears and was soaking wet from the tropical rain, so I just went into the river fully clothed, it was sunset, the sky and the river was grey, water droplets pounding in front of me, a few children enjoying the moment in the water but apart from that a sense of emptiness and washing away of the emotion. Some days the house where part of our group was in quarantine due to covid would spend a lot of time filling up water for the migrants. I also saw a man with only one leg on crutches trying to cross the jungle. I have no idea how these people do this.
It took me a few days to recover from the experience the previous day. Morale was low in the group. We went on a jungle walk and walked some of the path the migrants take, it was muddy, and we saw pieces of clothing discarded. Apparently, there are parts of the jungle where so many clothes are left as every little bit of extra weight takes up energy, so they get rid of clothing in a sense of desperation. At one point in the walk, each step I took I thought about how someone would manage to navigate the uneven surfaces, the stickiness without being able to see. We came across a yellow jacket on a pole. I thought it was a scarecrow and wondered what crops it was protecting in an area that wasn’t a finca (a farm). Apparently, there was an issue with migrants stealing the Guna’s food from their farms until they set up the camp where they charge 5 dollars (a lot less than other points along the way so they say) to feed them. The pole with the yellow raincoat was in the middle of the path. Walking past it was soon revealed that it was a human skull on a stick, a victim so close to a camp and such a sad sight. It is said there are over 1000 in the jungle as warning signs to those who try to walk the paths.
Seeing the migrants wash and bathe in the water, such a feeling of relief and joy. The local people washing their clothes on stands by the river and the children playing. We swam far upriver one day as we were told we could and came across a group of migrants waiting for a boat crossing in a different place to usual. They I think thought we were immigrants or wondered why we were swimming, they had been told that the river was too deep, too many caimans etc. At first, I thought it was corrupt that they had been lied to but then I realised that it was a way of keeping the community safe as they didn’t think they could cross at night without a boat.
Like something out of a western film, I went to try to cross the river and there were a group of migrants walking ahead of us, they went to where the river meets the sea and began to try to cross. They seemingly didn’t want to pay the toll for the boat. Two men on horses came to try to stop them, they crossed the river, showing how deep it was and then stood on the other side shouting in Spanish at the group. The group gradually inched forward, there was a back and forth a little then they stormed across, one man going back to help with the bags. They walked up on to the beach and then the horses chased them. The horses helped to stop them going to the camp and forced them to keep going up the beach to Coco Loco and beyond, the stretch of beach seems to never end up the coast, with coconut palms for miles and miles out front.
Sculptures made in situ responding to the intuitive material use and shelters made in Armila.
It’s interesting how all the different Guna communities have their own rules, and they are autonomous to the Panamanian government. I’d like to know how different the rules are in each community. Apparently, the community used to be more matriarchal but now isn’t so much as when they had to fight for independence from the government and in world politics, they send men for the negotiations as the rest of the world doesn’t take women as seriously. As a result, when the men came back it changed everything. Being af female artist working collaboratively with another female artist during this experience was an interesting way to respond to this context. I believe we have a lot to learn from local and indigenous knowledge with regards to climate change and this experience as a chance for me to listen and to learn from their way of life.
I was really struck by the way that they have worked collaboratively and for the collective interest. I’m interested in how this is also paralleled in the systems within trees and forests and the mycorrhizal networks which is both co-operative and rhizomatic.
It is also amazing how the Guna people have managed to fight off a road being built through their territory. Apparently, it would make things much easier as the plane is very expensive and of course not much weight can be taken but they don’t feel it is in their best interest. Both the Panamanian government, the Colombians and they in some ways also profit from the migrant situation so this adds pressure not to build.
My time in Armila was eye opening in so many ways. I would like to thank the Indigenous Guna People for sharing their stories with me and for welcoming me into their community. It was an unforgettable experience and such a privilege. I am looking forward to responding to the experience through practice and drawing comparisons with the forest of Dean in the UK to begin a comparison between the Global North and South. This will form the starting point for my PhD research and help to set up the methodologies I will use. This practice-led interdisciplinary project considers the relationship between the visual arts and contemporary expectations of landscape.
My PhD will focus on examples of where the arts are raising awareness of climate issues, thinking about how a sculptural practice can help to form a sense of place and why this might be important in the context of climate change. I’m also interested in thinking about how the processes I use can be better for the environment. By reusing materials, using fewer materials, alternatives like using my body and alternating between more physical works and digital outputs. Obviously digital works still have an impact, but their physical presence is less. The importance in our connection to materiality is something that struck me most because of my experience in Panama and will impact future works and my thinking. In particular, the relationship between materiality and sense of place.
