Se denomina “Tesoro de los Quimbayas” a un conjunto de objetos de oro y tumbaga, procedente de Colombia y datado del S V-VI d.C, encontrado formando parte del ajuar de dos tumbas de la cultura precolombina Quimbaya. El hallazgo tuvo lugar en el año 1890 por un grupo de huaqueros (expoliadores de tumbas). El tesoro está compuesto por un total de 433 piezas y el peso de 21.224 gr.

La calidad de este conjunto es tan espectacular, que se puede considerar como el principal tesoro americano hasta el descubrimiento de la tumba del señor de Sipán en Perú.

Al no existir una ley proteccionista sobre los bienes arqueológicos, dependía del propio huaquero, del intermediario o del comprador final, el que estos objetos terminaran o no fundidos en lingotes, que lamentablemente solía ser el destino más habitual. Miles de kilos de oro labrado o trabajado por los artífices precolombinos terminaron fundidos y perdidos para siempre por causa de esta “fiebre del oro” que no sólo se dio durante la época colonial, sino de forma especialmente intensa en el último cuarto del siglo XIX.

En 1891 el tesoro fue adquirido por el Gobierno Colombiano a los intermediarios que a su vez lo habían comprado a los huaqueros que lo encontraron en 1890. El gobierno de Colombia cedió el tesoro a España para la exposición Exposición Histórico Americana, dentro de los actos de conmemoración del IV Centenario del Descubrimiento de América en Madrid. En el 1893 el entonces presidente de la República, Carlos Holguín, donó el tesoro a la Reina Gobernadora de España, María Cristina. Actualmente el Museo de América custodia y exhibe las piezas.

Aleix Plademunt

Aleix Plademunt approached the Matter photo project as a chance to take time out to review, explore and reach new conclusions about the production of certain consumer goods and the origins and meanings of raw materials in today’s world. From the Latin, mater (mother), the term ‘matter’, which is the title of the series, refers to the primary substance that makes up everything that is tangible. In English, matter also means problem, issue, something that is important or of concern, in an etymological nod to the conflict that is still at the heart of the most primary and primal. Plademunt’s project thus delves into one of the oldest questions of existence, which is central to physical and theological debates: the origin of matter. Be he also explores its transformation and certain uses and applications. Plademunt is interested in the ways in which human beings, who occupy a tiny, fleeting fraction of the cosmos, insist on constantly transforming and controlling matter, in a confirmation of the existence of a new era: the Anthropocene, a time when human action is the main factor changing the planet, starting precisely with the Industrial Revolution.

These ideas are embodied in photographs such as Salt, Utah, from the same series, which directly refers to the US region exploited during the Gold Rush in the 19^th century. The area experienced another rush in World War II, but for uranium, the basis of nuclear weapons, with everything that it would symbolise from then on in the context of the tensions of the Cold War. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was another country that supplied uranium. Coltan is currently mined there: it is an essential component for manufacturing mobile phones and for the technological entertainment industry, as suggested in PS2 and in King Kong; an element behind which there are thousands of deaths and conditions of human slavery to meet the interests of multinationals. Plademunt also turns his sights on gold as a central motif, due to its symbolic and historical importance. It has traditionally underpinned national currencies and is directly present in two of his transformations: as a pre-Colombian fetish in Cacique Quimbaya and in its customary ‘civilised’ form (and no less of a fetish) as an ingot in Gold.

Matter is thus an invitation to reflect on the complexity that prevails in Western progress, in a narrative journey from the return to the most pristine (matter) to the clearest political and social implications of its transformation and uses. Plademunt’s photographs are therefore not isolated entities intended just to be looked at, but rather visual phases that form a complex narrative where the historical moments that form the common bond of “matter” crisscross, starting from the inert seed of the combination of conflicts, violence, slavery, consumption and destructions of the environment behind some of today’s most bloody contradictions.

Carlos Martín