About Us

All the works in this exhibition represent individual paths of sovereignty, stemming from experiences of enjoyment, spirituality, struggle, and dissent against gender and cisnormative behavior. They are produced by the experiences and struggles of predominantly Afro and black, and the term blacks is used to denote those who identify with the declaration of prietitud, as in the song of the same name. They respond to a geography that spans from Santa María de Timbiquí in Cauca, through Buenaventura, Cali, and Puerto Tejada, tracing routes from the Chocó coast to the Bay of Panama. This region, which we will refer to as the great Pacific, is a large, diverse, and contested territory from which the present works emerge.

Certain places still remember that cimarrones (“maroon” in English, a colonial term for runaway enslaved people) flew over the land, fought against settler troops, and defended the first palenques. The exhibition’s title is derived from an allegorical universe in which fireflies (kalabongó in the Palenquero language) represent the runaway Africans who battle with bats (settlers) in a fight where darkness is an ally of freedom. Kalabongó inquiries into the significance of images for society and the use of artistic practices as tools for political action, historical vindication, and the recovery and reconstruction of local knowledge linked to ancestral cosmogonies.

This is Mexican artist Tania Candiani’s first large-scale exhibition in Colombia and brings together a series of works based on sound, artisanal processes and rivers, which speak of different latitudes but also, and above all, of Medellin. Some of her works lead through paths that merge the Earth with its human and non-human inhabitants, bringing them closer, and also questioning the meaning that each one of them gives to their brief passage through this planet. Vaguely structured around Preludio cuántico, a two-channel octophonic video that connects mystical, scientific and aesthetic visions of the universe, Ofrenda poses -from sound and matter- a series of reflections on that which is primordial, both audible and palpable.

Acoustic Fossil is a project by artists Santiago Reyes Villaveces (Bogotá, 1986) and Daniel Villegas Vélez (Manizales, 1984) that transforms Lab3 into a resonance chamber using a tactile sculpture shaped like the inner ear. This sculpture allows for the manipulation of the sound within the installation where its auditory component consists of field recordings and a continuous synthesized drone that responds in real-time to the public’s interaction with the sculpture, as well as the activity of the Aburrá River and its surroundings. Acoustic Fossil. Listening (With) the River is an invitation to feel and think of listening from the body. It is a call to allow ourselves to be touched by sound and, in turn, an opportunity to touch the process of listening, situating ourselves within the network of relationships that we maintain with the Aburrá River, its territories, communities, and the diverse beings that inhabit its banks and waters.

Every pilgrimage that is an authentic experience implies, too, an inner journey, a comprehensive occurrence. In Hernando Tejada’s case (b. Pereira, 1924 – d. Cali, 1998), his travels through Colombia reaffirmed his vocation as an artist and a human being. He found inspiration in the botanical richness of the swampy and tropical zones of the Pacific, as well as in the natural and cultural diversity of the communities of the Caribbean coast. These landscapes and everyday scenes nourished a large part of his work. The Museum celebrates Hernando Tejada’s 100th birthday with an exhibition that takes us on a journey back to mid-twentieth-century Colombia and his individual and unique approach to the territory, as well as to Tejada’s patient contemplation and profound sensitivity that captured a large portion of the country’s diversity and richness.

The notion of cultural and artistic heritage is conflicting as a tangible and intangible asset that is preserved and transmitted for its value from one generation to the next. This is because the concepts of art and culture are dynamic: they respond to specific times and social contexts. Moreover, terms such as tradition, history, identity and heritage, for example, linked to a heritage – in this case the Museum – determine profiles, organizations and conservation processes that limit works of art to objects that must remain static, both in their materiality and in their apparent service to cultural identity, history, commodification and tourism.