Viewing Room is an itinerant initiative of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), highlighting a single artwork through a short-term presentation and a discursive program around it.

This episode of Viewing Room consists of the installation Secrets of the Amazon — Tomo River (2011) by artists Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, opening at 4pm, followed by the lecture by Paulo Tavares at 6:30 pm.

Artists Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves have spent several years investigating the role images have played in the imaginary and comprehension of the Peruvian Research Institute and the Center for Theological Studies of the Amazon, the latter founded by Father Joaquín García Sánchez and located in Iquitos, Peru. A 35mm-slide double-projection, Secrets of the Amazon— Tomo River is one of several artworks created from such experience. This work draws from a quasi travel-book of the Peruvian Amazons authored by a member of the military who was stationed in the region in the late twentieth century.

Secrets of the Amazon— Tomo River is on public display for the afternoon, starting at 4pm. At 6:30 pm, in the same space, architect Paulo Tavares shares his ongoing work on Amazonia, exploring the contested history of its representation and appropriation by the colonial-modern imaginary evident in cartographies, images and spatial designs. Through a forensic archaeology of the landscapes of Amazonia, Tavares approaches the forest as architecture, excavating the history of a territory whose nature is deeply cultural, shaped and re-shaped by political conflicts. This public program intends to elucidate the different kinds of work being done in and about Amazonia to offer a broader context for better comprehending such a region, as well as the artwork on view.