La paradoja del progreso: Materialización mural de la memoria borrada por el Complejo Hidroeléctrico Paute Integral en Sevilla de Oro

Abstract

This thesis addresses the impact of the Paute Integral Hydroelectric Complex on the heritage, ecological, and human aspects of the Sevilla de Oro canton in Ecuador. The research examines, through the artistic process, the tension between energy development, promoted under discourses of national progress, and the socio-environmental consequences that remain invisible in official narratives. The artistic proposal materializes through an installation with an expanded mural that combines impasto painting, high and low relief techniques, and object art. The work uses materials collected from the affected territory (landslide soil processed through fire experimentation, abandoned objects, crop residues, adobe, among others), transforming them into compositional elements that function as physical testimonies of territorial losses and memorials. The creative and experimental process revealed that the materials of the territory are resistant to manipulation: the clay detaches, cracks, and demands constant "healing," operating as an unintentional metaphor for Derridean impossible mourning. This work integrates ethnographic fieldwork with material experimentation, developing a visual archaeology that recovers and reinterprets the material vestiges of the altered landscape. The expected result goes beyond representation to generate a visual and sensory experience that activates the memory of the transformed landscape, proposing new visual epistemologies to understand the contradictions of energy extraction and establishing a critical counterpoint to the official development discourse.