Name: Kumanday
Size: 50 x 50 cm
Medium: Woodcut and collage on paper
Year: 2020
Description: In “Verses from the Pluriverse” Ernesto Cardenal reminds us that this planet is fire inside: its nucleus as hot as the sun. To make sure, we just have to lean into a volcano’s crater. To look at the mouth of the volcano is to see the center of the earth is to look at the energy of the sun.
When the energy of center of the earth finds a way out, it buries peoples under its fire. In 1985, after 69 years of inactivity, the Colombian town of Armero was swallowed by the lava spat out by the snow-capped Ruiz volcano, originally called Kumanday. Thousands of people were buried under rivers of scalding mud and earth.