WHEN + WHERE

Opening reception: Wed. February 5, 5 - 7pm

Exhibition on view: Feb. 6 - 19, 2025

Gallery hours: Mon - Thurs, 9am - 6pm; Fri, 9am - 5pm

Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery, Watt Hall 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Nos quieren quitar el rio explores the complex history, culture and ecology of the Amazonian territory of Bagua, land of the Awajún Indigenous people of Peru. Informed by conversation-based research with the Shushug community and Baguinos, Leon foregrounds the stories and voices—both human and non-human—that shape these landscapes. At the same time, the work articulates how these lands have long been constructed as regions of plunder by oil companies, illegal mining and logging. These extractive practices, driven by the state and corporations, rupture Indigenous cosmological relationships to the land and enable new forms of settler colonialism that reframe nature as a corporate bio-territory.  

Leon’s sculptural paintings underscore the importance of decolonial theory and moving beyond Eurocentric paradigms to embrace Indigenous knowledge and forms of resistance that serve land and environmental justice. Nos quieren quitar el rio advocates to reimagine landscapes; not as flat areas to be extracted for profit, but as dynamic, layered geographies that center the relationships between humans, their environments, and other species.