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Francisco Baquerizo Racines (1993) researches how colonial histories continue to affect the present. He is especially interested in the contradiction of centre versus periphery, and in how power radiates outwards from the centre to other areas. In his video installation La Quema (del Planeta “B”) (2025), i.e. the incineration of planet B, he explores the colonial fantasy of occupying and exploiting new territories. Serving as the work’s point of departure is the city where the artist grew up: Guayaquil, Ecuador.
In 2024, it was exactly 400 years ago that the Nassau fleet, a joint venture of the States General of Holland and the VOC (Dutch East India Company), attacked Guayaquil and set it on fire. Baquerizo Racines links this event to the Ecuadorian tradition of burning año viejo dolls. Made from paper and cardboard in a wide variety of capitalist manifestations, from superheroes to celebrities, these are burnt during the New Year’s Eve celebrations to put the old year (año viejo) to rest and welcome the new one.
For his film, Baquerizo Racines asked Guayaquil-based artists Joshua Jurado and Diego Cuesta to make an año viejo representation of De Amsterdam, a ship from the Nassau fleet. We see how the colourful ship is transported through the streets of the port city to the riverbank, where local residents send it up in flames signifying resilience. The work is rich with references to contemporary colonial dynamics, including extractivism, between the Netherlands and Ecuador. Today, this manifests through multinationals like Shell rather than the VOC, and through drug trafficking, which closely links the ports of Rotterdam and Guayaquil.
Text: Milo Vermeire
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)