INSTALLATIONS

During the fieldwork for the research “Visual Apologues (Apólogos Visuales),” the artist had the opportunity to meet and share with the Sequian community that today resides in the Wakoyo reservation, located in the municipality of Puerto Gaitán, Meta.

For this research, the artist used qualitative methods, mainly two: observant participation and semi-structured interviews. For the attentive involvement work, as a method of data collection, was based on slow and continuous observation in order to identify and establish the elements of the social facts relevant to the research, as well as the selection of the group of people to be interviewed. The semi-structured interviews, on the other hand, were developed with thematic scripts of open questions in order to institute the relationships and categories to formulate new questions that link themes and answers. Likewise, the fundamental questions were prepared according to the people to be interviewed, considering, in addition to the generic parameters, each interviewee’s role within their family and community, bearing in mind that 340 families and 31 districts are in this reservation. These thematic scripts have been structured around «Spirituality and landscape» as fundamental axes, with traditions and territory as a common thread.

Contemporary artists have widely explored landscapes, space, and territory from all over the world. Since the late sixties, artists like Robert Smithson began to delve into how to produce viewers’ emotions through intervened landscapes. The alteration of these landscapes was proposed with a purely artistic and not practical sense, thus initially seeking effects such as awakening a conscience concerned with the relationship between human beings and the earth, the environment, etc. Although most of these interventions were made in natural spaces, later, they were transferred to urban landscapes. Examples of this are the works of the couple Christo and Jean-Claude, who wrapped buildings and covered extensive public areas, or the minimalist sculptures of Richard Serra. With the public intervention in Puerto Gaitán, he speaks specifically about the territory seized. For its realization, 40x40cm tiles were made and printed with a pictographic pattern called «namokobetjei: «palm of the fox’s hand» and matching the tones used, a «yamajü wakapa atañe: «drawing of the lightning baton» is completed. Thus completing, the Sequian symbolism covers 8,000m2 of land, precisely making an allegory to this community’s belonging on it.