UROS ISLAND

Grimanesa Amoros video thumbnail for UROS ISLAND

Location: Wereldmuseum | Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2012
13 ft 7 in x 11 ft 2 in x 26 in
Stainless steel, diffusion material and reflective material, LEDs, custom lighting sequence, and electrical hardware.

UROS ISLAND is a light sculpture presented at the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam as part of the traveling Future Pass exhibition, its LED form evoking both the pre-Incan floating reed islands of Lake Titicaca and the sea foam of Amorós’s Lima childhood in a work that brought one of Peru’s most enduring Indigenous traditions into one of Europe’s most significant ethnographic museum collections.

Presented at the Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam’s celebrated museum of world cultures, UROS ISLAND found a natural institutional home in a space dedicated to the living traditions and material cultures of civilizations across the globe, deepening the work’s resonance as a tribute to the pre-Incan Uros people of Lake Titicaca.

Part of the traveling Future Pass exhibition produced in partnership with the Today Art Museum in Beijing, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, and the UNEEC Culture and Education Foundation in Taipei, the Rotterdam presentation extended the work’s reach across three continents and into the heart of European contemporary art discourse.

The Wereldmuseum’s collections encompass the cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, placing UROS ISLAND in direct dialogue with objects and traditions from across the ancient world and situating Amorós’s practice within the museum’s broader mission of cross-cultural exchange.

The sculpture appears to arise seamlessly from the ground as if one with the earth, a quality drawn directly from the organic logic of the reed island itself, which the Uros people continuously rebuild and replenish as a living, breathing structure rather than a fixed object.

When Amorós was a child living on the coast of Peru, she always loved the beauty of the ocean; everything from the tides to the colors, to the bubbles and the foam.

Uros Island is inspired by the islands in Lake Titicaca, located southeast of Peru. They are floating islets made entirely out of totora reeds. The pre-Incan Uros, who live on these forty-two self-fashioned floating islands, build everything out of this material – from houses to boats to watch towers.

From these two ideas, she created Uros Island to reflect the natural elegance of sea foam and totora reeds. The sculpture will seemingly arise from the ground as if it were one with the earth.

Future Pass is a production of the Wereldmuseum, the Today Art Museum in Beijing, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, and the UNEEC Culture and Education Foundation in Taipei. It was achieved in cooperation with the Fondazione Claudio Buziol. Curator Victoria Lu (Creative Director, Today Art Museum, Beijing) is responsible for the exhibition’s content.