Remembering Abel Rodríguez

On the Amazon basin artist, el nombrador de plantas

Abel Rodríguez, Terraza Alta II, 2018.

Earlier this month, Abel Rodríguez—artist, knowledge keeper, and guardian of the Amazon’s memory, passed away. Born Mogaje Guihu in 1941 in the Muinane community of the Colombian rainforest, Rodríguez carried a vast world within him. Not just the names of plants or the patterns of rivers, but the spiritual and ecological knowledge of a people who have lived in balance with the forest for generations.

Before the art world knew his name, he was called el nombrador de plantas—the namer of plants. As a young boy, he studied under his uncle, a sabedor, learning the forest not through books or drawings, but through silence, observation, and memory. In his community, knowledge wasn’t written down; it was lived and passed on orally, absorbed through long nights of listening and watching.