On Friday, November 1, 2024, the PAV Parco Arte Vivente, within the framework of Artissima, presents the first solo exhibition in Italy of the Ecuadorian artist Adrián Balseca (1989) curated by Marco Scotini. The exhibition explores the role of the human being as an agent in the ecosystem, focusing on the relationships between economy, ecology, and memory, as well as on the power dynamics related to extractivism and the exploitation of nature.

Operating through a variety of narratives that combine real facts, historical archives, ethno-fiction, and memory, Adrián Balseca presents a series of projects in the exhibition, realized over the past ten years, focusing on the local stories of his home country. In 2008, with the entry into force of Article 71, Ecuador became the first country in the world to constitutionally recognize nature as a subject of rights: "Nature, or Pacha Mama, the place where life is reproduced and concretized, has the right to the integral respect of its existence and the maintenance and regeneration of its vital cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes." 

A new perspective that has been crucial is the rich presence of indigenous peoples in the country, who, by claiming the need to be a useful voice to actively cooperate in decisions regarding the territories in which they live, have contributed to generating a new political and legal reflection that has shifted the focus from an anthropocentric view of law to a biocentric view. Despite the country's constitution legally protecting one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, extractive activities are not declining, along with the social and environmental damages they entail. In this context, many thinkers in Ecuador have developed socio-economic concepts of degrowth, highlighting the biophysical limits of the neoliberal model and proposing other development possibilities, with the aim of mitigating and reducing the impact that human actions have on climate change.