The Year of the Stone

Artist: Pedro Gómez-Egaña

Here, the underground is not merely a physical depth; it is a material, spiritual, and oneiric dimension defined by four fundamental impulses: extracting wealth, safeguarding what is precious, discarding what we prefer not to see, and transcending death. Through a staging that renders everyday spaces uncanny, the exhibition operates like the dream of a spectral mule: a figure from the region’s muleteer tradition that traverses the thin line between labor and horror, between surface and depth. The mule stands as the silent witness to a constant exchange in which what emerges from the earth is as precious as it is lethal. Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s vision moves beyond ecological moralism to pose an ontological question: how do we relate today to mineral and animal entities?

Pedro Gómez-Egaña was born in Colombia and lives and works in Oslo, Norway. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts and is a professor of sculpture and installation at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. His practice spans installation, sculpture, performance, and sound works. Drawing inspiration from literary and historical references linked to processes of industrialization, as well as from the histories of cinema and science, he frequently explores the relationships between technology and mysticism, and the emotional and spiritual dimensions of contemporary culture. Temporality is a central category in his work: Gómez-Egaña examines how we experience deeply contradictory forms of time and constructs spaces that might be described as choreographic, where movement, music, and architecture carry the content.