Video performance, 1:56 min, 2020

The ‘Quechua’ or ‘Runa Shimi’ is a sweet and sonorous language. My relation with this language emerges through conversations with the Yanakuna countrymen. The poet Fredy Chicangana talks about being Chakaruna (bridge people) and its resonance with the artist's work. In the Quechua Yanakuna cosmovision, the “Chakaruna” is the one who establishes connections between worlds, taking different expressions along its way, looking for the spoken words transmitted by generations to reach different spaces.

I envision my work in resonance with the archetype of being Chakaruna from a personal and collective memory. I am looking for an image that evokes what the elders have walked in the community and outside of it, supporting the image of a bridge, which converges in intercultural action.
Link to video here. 

Video performance, 13:33 min, 2020

The installation "Recital" consists of a small table, a glass jug, two glasses and several oranges. The action starts when I crouch next to the installation. Later, a fellow percussionist approaches my body and begins to play like a drum on my back, singing various tunes. At the same time and in relation to the rhythm of the percussion, I squeeze several oranges, trying to fill the glass jug with their juice. The action ends when I squeeze all the oranges, I serve the orange juice in the glasses and we drink it together with the percussionist partner. Link to video here.  

Performance, 6 hours, 2021.

Manuel Quintín Lame and Pio quinta León or Lucia Galindo Salazar, Staying Performance. Shoe polish paint on glass, variable dimensions, duration: 6 hours, 2021

I paint the portrait of Manuel Quintín Lame and his wife Pioquinta León, also known as Lucía Galindo Salazar. In this action I take a look at the forms of representation of this indigenous leader, and at the historical documentation of his wife present in the image. The reproduction of this archive photo of the Pijao Youth Committee and the Tolima Regional Indigenous Council, is also proposed as an echo of the syncretism present in the Indigenous communities of Cauca, and recognizes the historical struggle for the defense of their territories in cultural resistance. The change in the materiality of the shoe polish as time passes marks different states in the work.

Performance-Installation, 120 min, 3m2, 2021.

The work takes elements from the “minga”, pre-Columbian tradition of voluntary community or collective work for purposes of social utility of a reciprocal nature​. Its character is participatory and seeks to generate encounters with the artistic object. The action consists of a lighting charcoal inside a metal structure in the shape of a marigold flower, until its embers are fully alive. The purpose of the action is to establish a dialogue from the color, between the marigold as a natural sign of healing and the fire as an element of knowledge. Link to video here. 

Performance – Installation, 4m2, 20 minutes, 2019.

“This side up” is an action that reflects on the existing tensions between the dynamics of human production on an industrial scale and the diverse temporalities present in the cyclical and natural. The action proposes a shift in the way to look between the notion of being above and below, the idea of the content that emanates and what contains it, transforming it.

I find myself next to 15 pairs of black shoes lined up with each other containing yellow soil. Next, I take off my personal shoes (which have the title of the work written backwards: “This side up”) and in a reiterated action I lift each pair of shoes from the set, spraying the soil contained in them in the same place where they were, thus generating small mounds. As the performance progresses I change the arrangement of each pair of shoes, placing one shoe on top of each mound and the other shoe behind and on the ground. Once all the mounds of earth have been made and all the pairs of shoes have been moved, I put on the last pair of the set of shoes and leave the place. Link to video and pictures here. 

Installation, 1mt2, 2016.

The piece is a conceptual reflection on the phrase of the Cuban thinker and politician José Martí "All the glory of the world fits in a corn grain", which is printed on a sack full of corn that the artist has in the exhibition space. The work seeks to suggest a symbolic reading in relation to the construction of territories beyond the concept of the Nation-State, and on agricultural production on an industrial scale in the Latin American context.

The notion of the content and what it contains arises in the use of the industrial fiber sack as a support for the historical phrase, the corn inside the sack seeks to reveal its character as a seed, depositary of a genetic and temporal legacy that the American common people knew how to study and breed to conserve their diversity of species. The corn used for the installation is from the artist's community of origin: Rioblanco, Sotará.

Performance-Installation, 8 min, 2m2, 2013.

"Calendula" consists of an object made of elastic material which contains ash and charcoal, and an installation made up of two plastic plates arranged one on top of the other, covering inside marigold flowers.The action consists of sifting the ash and charcoal that the object contains, causing its volume to move completely into the exhibition space. The turn of the action occurs when I remove the plate from above and the marigold flowers are discovered, thus contrasting the color of the flowers with the film of ash and charcoal. 

The action seeks to symbolically relate the natural and industrial elements present in the exhibition space: the extractivist nature of the coal, the imprint of fire present in the ash and the marigold as a medicinal plant used to treat the skin. Link to video here.