A large mural depicting the Nukak Indigenous reservation in the Colombian Amazon welcomed visitors to the exhibition Huellas de desaparición (Traces of Disappearance) in the Miguel Urrutia Art Museum (Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia, or MAMU) in Bogotá.1 Staged at the entrance to the gallery, this digital collage made from aerial and satellite pictures, remote sensing data, historical maps, and archival material offered information on crop-dusting, environmental destruction, artificial borders, citizenship construction, and forced displacement. The adjacent explanatory panel, titled “Colonial Acknowledgment,” recognized the contested ground of the Colombian national territory and identified the internal armed conflict in Colombia as part of a continuous cycle of violence against Indigenous communities in the Americas. Although the layers of information revealed the historical complexity of the Nukak territory, only specialized eyes, trained in abstraction, could perceive all the meanings of the exhibited image.2 The juxtaposition of the abstract...

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