Painting (Painting)

Juego de Banderas (a play on words that loosely translates to both set of flags and game of flags) is a triptych of modified Colombian flags by Antonio Caro. Although the yellow, blue and red stripes on the first flag are faithful to the original, the second flag at the center has been modified to feature the word Colombia, emulating the typography and white-on-red design of the iconic Coca-Cola brand. Caro’s first version of this logo was a 1976 graphite drawing, and he has since produced several variations in different materials.

Installation (Installation)

Primero estaba el mar ( First Was the Sea , 2012) is a system of equivalences between syllables and silhouettes of waveforms cast in cement. Each waveform represents a syllable of the sentence “Primero estaba el mar.” This sentence is the first verse of the Kogui poem of creation. For the Koguis, an indigenous community from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Colombian Caribbean coast, water was the absolute presence before the creation of the universe.

Installation (Installation)

Defined as entropy, the second law of thermodynamics proposes that energy is more easily dispersed than it is concentrated. One basic illustration of entropy is to imagine white and black sand: once mixed together, it is highly unlikely that the contrasting grains of sand can be separated and restored to their original distinct color groups. Arturo’s Trópico Entrópico ( Entropic Tropics , 2012) considers the colonization of the American continent as a similarly irreversible process of cultural entropy.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Johanna Calle’s Abece “K” (2011) is part of a series of drawings (compiled into an artist book called Abece ) based on the alphabet. There is a drawing for each letter, in which the letter is repeated over and again in various directions and scales, thereby demonstrating how a symbol can be reoriented without changing its linguistic meaning. Here, the letter K is outlined and surrounded by a dense and varied field of other K s.

Installation (Installation)

A residency program in the blazing hot city of Honda, Colombia, inspired artist Nicolás Consuegra to consider the difficulty in understanding the needs of a distant community. An important town during the colonial era as the main port on the Magdalena River, Honda is presently rife with poverty, unemployment, and environmental deterioration. Here he produced the work Nadie sabe de la sed con que otro bebe (No one knows the thirst with which another drinks) , a variable arrangement of cut glasses in front of a mirror so that they appear whole.

Photography (Photography)

In his project Instituto de Vision (2008), Consuegra investigates how modernism gave rise to many new technological forms of vision, most notably the camera, yet also resulted in the disappearance of outmoded forms of vision. As a metaphor for this process, he looks to the afterlife of the image as evidenced in signs. When a company goes out of business or moves, their sign often lingers and slowly fades creating a ghosted image of their sojourn.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Nicolas Paris studied architecture and worked as an elementary school teacher before he decided to become an artist. Both of those interests feed deeply into his artistic practice, which ranges from workshops, dialogues, and exchanges to environments, drawings, and sculpture. Metaphors of the presence or conversations at the speed of light (2012) is a sculpture of a lightbulb that the artist altered.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks. Traces of art history reverberate through the sculptures; their mediums reflect traditional materials for drawing and sketching, and the simplicity of their forms gesture toward minimalism. But López dislocates these common objects from their ordinary utility by replicating their component parts in paper, graphite, and charcoal, thus drawing attention to mechanisms of representation and translation.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Casa de la cabeza (2011) is a drawing of the words of the title, which translate literally into English as “house of the head.” Ortiz uses this humorous phrase to engage the idea of living in your head.

Installation (Installation)

Mateo Lopez uses paper as a medium to conjure personal experiences. The artist creates drawings and trompe l’oeil objects, ranging from apples to clothing hangers to doors. These props are part of a performance; he often sets up his studio in public and uses cues from his own journeys as the inspiration for his work.

Photography (Photography)

In Ante la imagen (Before the Image, 2009) Muñoz continues to explore the power of a photograph to live up to the memory of a specific person. Since a photograph is fixed, it cannot encapsulate the spirit of someone who is gone. Muñoz etched onto the surface of a mirror an appropriated historical image, a daguerreotype from 1839.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

With Roca Carbon ( Charcoal Rock , 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks. Traces of art history reverberate through the sculptures; their mediums reflect traditional materials for drawing and sketching, and the simplicity of their forms gesture toward minimalism. But López dislocates these common objects from their ordinary utility by replicating their component parts in paper, graphite, and charcoal, thus drawing attention to mechanisms of representation and translation.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Calle’s drawings all inhabit received forms but alter them to call attention to specific qualities. A newspaper is both reproduced and modified to call attention to the newspaper as a means of information transmission. This also emphasizes the effect of various seemingly unimportant support mechanisms: the role of visual layout and images.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Consuegra’s Colombia is a mirror made in the shape of the artist’s home country—a silhouette that has an important resonance for the artist. Consuegra’s mirrored Colombia is similar to an earlier version, made to be show opposite a mirror of the United States. Whether reflecting his two homes within one another (Consuegra studied in the US and has made several works about this experience of living in exile from his homeland), or simply reflecting its surroundings, Colombia is a simple yet evocative work about the identity of a nation, and the things that we project—really and metaphorically—onto its form.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Libro Azul (Ayer-Mañana) (Blue Book (Yesterday-Tomorrow))

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Centro Espacial Satelital de Colombia (Colombian Satellite Space Center) , Calderón & Piñeros (La Decanatura) play tribute to two “stunning” satellite antennas installed in the small municipality of Chocontá where, in 1970, the Space Communications Center of Colombia was inaugurated. That same year, the first antenna, responsible for the transmission (via microwave) of radio and telephone signals was put in place and eleven years later, the second antenna or Ground Station for International Communications would complete the complex known as Space Communications Center. Excursions to visit what became known as the “Satellite City of Colombia” were common for decades.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Untitled consists of a small wooden sculpture that leans against a wall. Here, a rectangular piece of wood holds a folded article from a vintage design magazine whose Italian text states: “Villa per una persona sola. Arquitectura Pasadena California.” On the flipside of the paper is a feature with different images of paintings and architecture, including a painting by Piet Mondrian.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In his paper-based work, Medellin-New York , Rojas uses coca leaves and dollar bills to spell out the words of the two cities, tied together through the illicit exchange of materials used to make the word, gesturing towards the uncomfortable reality of the drug trafficking trade and the complicity of both America and Colombia within that economic system.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

A rich and isolated region, El Catatumbo is located near the border with Venezuela. Different groups fight over its gold and oil, while narcotic plantations have exploited the region over the years, provoking massacres, displacement, and migrations amongst its native populations. Nohemí Pérez’s skillful and eloquent watercolors, titled Apuntes para panorama Catatumbo , testifies to this aspect of Colombia’s history that has been veiled by other equally pressing political issues.

Painting (Painting)

Abel Rodríguez’s precise, botanical illustrations are drawn from memory and knowledge acquired by oral traditions. They are the visions of someone who sees the potential of plants as food, material for dwellings and clothing, and for use in sacred rites. Terraza Alta V is part of a series of drawings that track the changing appearance and life of an area identified as Terraza Alta.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Unraveling, or “unweaving” sections of fabric, Maria Fernanda Plata arrived at delicate and tenuous-looking forms, both ghostly and gentle. Her careful meditations in fabric reflect Plata’s ongoing interest in the relationship between people and their environments, in fragility, systems, and destruction.

Installation (Installation)

The work Sarta (String) by Reyes Santiago Roja is part of a larger series of works that examine the commercialization of the tobacco plant and its relationship to the meaning and use of tobacco by Native American tribes such as the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas or Tainos, which attributed spiritual qualities to tobacco such as the smoke carrying one’s thoughts and prayers to the sprits. In this work the artist studied the forms of tobacco leaves native to Latin America and recreated their shapes with commercial tobacco packaging from such global brands as Marlboro or Camel to the most popular Colombian brand Pielroja. The leaves made of the packaging material are lined up on a string as if they are hung out to dry as in traditional tobacco making processes.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

They/Them by Juan Obando is a video essay and deepfake that uses Adobe Stock clips, maintaining their branded watermark, but animating the scenes underneath with a narrative of self-critical awareness. It’s a meta-narrative that uses the staged scenarios (as evidence) to talk about the variable politics (and mercenary capitalism) of the stock footage industry and the misinformation dilemma we’re facing with the arrival of AI technology. In a surprising reversal, a deepfake is used to tell the truth.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

La Masacre de el Aro (The Massacre of El Aro) by Jorge Julián Aristizábal refers to a massacre in Colombia which occurred on October 22, 1997 in the municipality of Ituango, Department of Antioquia. On this day, 15 individuals accused of being leftist supporters of FARC were massacred by paramilitary groups. Perpetrators also raped women, burned down 43 houses, stole cattle and forcibly displaced 900 people.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Manuel Correa’s short film Didn’t Know I Died is a testimonial portrait of the acclaimed Colombian poet Olga Elena Mattei. Earlier in her life during a simple medical operation, Mattei was declared medically dead. In the film, she recounts her first memory upon waking up, a dream.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

La Forma del Presente (The Shape of Now) by Manuel Correa follows a group of survivors of Colombia’s 50-year long armed conflict facing the impossible task of agreeing on a shared past. After half a century of carnage, Colombia achieved peace. Despite an agreement between the government and the Revolutionary armed forces of Colombia (FARC_EP) being rejected by popular vote, the government chose to implement the agreements regardless, further polarizing the public opinion.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the performance video Vitrina , María Teresa Hincapié stood inside a storefront window in downtown Bogota, unannounced, for eight hours a day, wearing a uniform and initially carrying out cleaning chores. As the day and passers went by, the routine became more playful: she would send kisses to bus drivers on the busy Avenida Jiménez who would return them, use the newspaper with which she was shining the glass to flirtatiously hide and engage with an improvised audience or draw the shape of her body with soap and a sponge. She would interrupt these chores to carry out other ‘feminine’ activities, like brushing her hair or applying make-up, only to return to frantically cleaning the transparent surface that separated her from the public.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Real. Retrato de Norman Mejía. (The Real. A Portrait of Norman Mejía.)

Film & Video (Film & Video)

El Salto (The Jump/The Waterfall) by Juan Covelli depicts the Salto de Tequendama, a waterfall located on the outskirts of southwest Bogota. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the waterfall served as a national symbol that captured both the singularity of its geographical reference point, as well as the romantic experience of nature and immensity. The video installation arises from a detailed archive research into historic representations of Colombian landscape and reflection on their role in the present-day imaginary of the country and the wider world.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The series Castigos del caucho by Santiago Yahuarcani originates in the oral memory transmitted by the artist’s grandfather, who was a survivor of the Putumayo genocide where thousands of Indigenous people were annihilated and enslaved to extract rubber from the Amazon forest between 1879 and 1912. Yahuarcani’s complex narrative paintings on tree bark highlight a long history of colonial violence against the Uitoto and other Indigenous communities. They also show the destruction of the rainforest under Western models of extraction, privatization, and development.