Forest Law

Ursula Biemann's artistic work has taken her to the most remote and fragile territories and ecosystems on the planet. The video Forest Law is part of a collaboration with Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares, and incorporates views of the Ecuadorian Amazon and interviews with various people involved in protecting the forest as a natural, spiritual and legal entity. This work of cinematic environmentalism takes place within the framework of a series of legal cases that led the forest to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to claim the rights of nature, with the forest as a living being, and the Sarayuku people as its defender. What emerges is a multidimensional portrait of the forest and the relationships that have been established in and with the forest, particularly by the original Shuar and Sarayaku peoples, which calls into question the ideas of progress, development and wealth held in the West.