Once Upon a Time in the Jungle

Once Upon a Time in the Jungle by River Claure transports us to the "Amazonian Wild Westrevealing the hidden narratives traversing the Ecuadorian Amazon and its complex dynamics of power and domination.

Through a masterful combination of still and moving imagesthe artist captures the latent violence that permeates the Amazonian landscape, marked by the weight of the colonial legacy, from devastating extraction of natural resources and theimposition of foreign ideologies.

After having sailed over 377 km in a canoe between southern Ecuador and northern Peru, Claure documents young rappers, soldiers, community leaders, elders, families and children, as a cowboy, become the protagonists of their own stories. In doing so, the artist challenging stereotypes that have long defined the photographic representation of Amazonia.

The exhibition, realised thanks to the EXPOSED Grant for Contemporary Photography, opens the door to new imaginary and speculative registersin which the promises of the western world clash with its own threats. In this scenario, rituals invented by the artist himself emerge as strategies of resistance against capitalist hegemony.

The exhibition is part of the main programme of the second edition of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival entitled Beneath The Surface.