Across history, European depictions of the Amazon have typically presented the South American region as a vast, untouched expanse.

Over time, a set of tropes took hold: the rainforest as a "virgin" wilderness; Indigenous life cast as belonging to an earlier era; the whole region suspended outside of time. As a result, a complex, culturally diverse territory has been flattened into an exotic backdrop.

Yet this framing of "the Amazon" as a single, timeless wilderness bears little resemblance to the culturally and historically diverse region of "Amazonia," the titular focus of a new exhibition in Bonn.

A shift in perspective

Co‑curated by anthropologist Leandro Varison and Brazilian Indigenous artist and activist Denilson Baniwa, " Amazonia.…