Te de Bogota

Te de Bogota. A group show curated by Jorge Sanguino:

FERNANDO BARRERA, KAREN PAULINA BISWELL. FELIPE CASTELBLANCO, BEATRIZ EUGENIA DIAZ BEJARANO, SIMON HERNANDEZ feat. SIMON MEJIA (BOMBA ESTEREO), ERWIN + LORENA KRAUS, JUAN MAYR.

Exhibition: March 14th – June 20th 2020

This exhibition is part of 

Te de Bogota (in Sp.Té de Bogotá) is an exhibition conceived around artistic positions, that deal with the Colombian nature. It explores the use of photography, video and film as a medium to document a complex relation: Colombian nature’s richness and  beauty and its unstoppable destruction. Its title “Té De Bogotá“, a magnificent tea discovered during the botanical expedition of the 18th century, but lately forgotten, proposes that this relation with nature has been historically traceable, and subsumed under a term: exploitation.

The exhibition reveals how Colombian artists are engaged in social practices with communities living in the different regions. Empowering inhabitants, Afrocolombians, natives, peasants, and women to become producers of their own cultural narratives and administrators of their own resources.

Colombian artists are shaping reality, at the same time they are documenting it, shifting the artistic production from the production of an (aesthetic) form towards a production of (social) knowledge, that occurs at the sea level of the caribbean, or up to the 5,000 meters of the nevados, as well as in the humid, beautiful jungle or in the Páramos.

A comprehensive essay about the exhibition can be download at academia. Spanish version / German version

te de Bogota wildpalms exhibition
exhibition view
Te de Bogota, curated show by Jorge Sanguino with photographs by Karen Paulina Biswell
Close up of installed works. Karen Paulina Biswell.
Betata (Montreadentro 1). 2015. 110 x 110cm. C Type hand print Kodak Endura Paper by Diamantino Quintas. Laminated on 2mm Alu plate. Ed. 3 + 2Ap
Betata (Montreadentro 1). 2015. 110 x 110cm. C Type hand print Kodak Endura Paper by Diamantino Quintas. Laminated on 2mm Alu plate. Ed. 3 + 2Ap
Jagua Karen Paulina Biswell
Jagua. 2015. 80 x 80cm. Analog C Type hand print Kodak Endura Paper by Diamantino Quintas. Laminated on 2mm Alu plate.
Exhibition Te de Bogota curated by Jorge Sanguino with Felipe Castelblanco his work Landscapes
exhibition view. Felipe Castelblanco (installation in front), Erwin Kraus (back)
Jorge Sanguino curator with works by Felipe Castelblanco and Karen Paulina Biswell in his seminal exhibition té de Bogotá
exhibition view. Felipe Castelblanco (in front), Fernando Barrera (back left), Karen Paulina Biswell (back right)
Felipe Castelblanco textile work with the Putumayo in Te de Bogota
Detail of installation. Felipe Castelblanco

Felipe Castelblanco
travels along the Putumayo river, develops documentary workshops with their habitants, and with beautiful images – and very rare captures – he documents the breathtaking magic as well as the tension for resources in this rich area.
work: Cartographies of the Unseen. Film still + collage of “RIO”. 2018. 100 x 100cm. Injekt print on fabric. Ed. 5 + 2AP. 1,500€ excl. tax. Felipe Castelblanco.

work: Andaki Territory and the invisibles. Churumbelos National Park. Colombia. 2018. 100 x 80cm. Inkjet print on fabric. Ed. 5+2AP. 1,500€ excl. tax. Felipe Castelblanco.

Fernando Barrera transformed the colombian nature in a large photographic studio. He had captured the fallen trees and branches, and converted them into monumental cyanotipes. work: Flora Girardotensis #4: Rhapis excelsa, Areca catechu, Epipremnum aureum, Bismarckia nobilis, 300m.s.n.m., 4° 18′ 13′′ N, 74° 48′ 14′′ W. 2018. 160 x 240cm. Cyanotype on canvas. Unique. Fernando Barrera

Simon Hernandez, prize winning documentary maker,  researches together with Simon Mejia (Bomba Estereo) the inception of the Cumbia rhythm in San Basilio, and gave the community the tools to record their oral tradition, that it is considered world cultural patrimony. Later embodied in magnificent images, Hernandez pays tribute to the vernacular poetry of a peasant as resistance against a mine company.

Ayayay. 2018. Film still of video. Simon Hernandez (feat. Carlos Mendez)
Click on the image to see the work in vimeo on Simon Hernandez’s account
La Voz De La Terra. Film Still of . 2018. Simon Hernandez.
Click on the image to see the work in Vimeo on Simon Hernandez’s account

Té De Bogotá, shows for the first time in Europe, the historic photographs of the Colombian glaciers by Erwin Kraus. He captured the sublimity of the mountain, and its beauty,  contemporary transformed through his grandaughter’s artistic archival practice, Lorena Kraus, into a lively document of memories and the scientific documention of the melting.

Installation view. Erwin & Lorena Kraus.
Close up of installation. Erwin & Lorena Kraus.
Paramos. 1948. 6 x 6cm. Vintage. Silbergelatin on photographic paper. On request. Erwin Kraus.
Si-Non. 1939. 6 x 6cm. Vintage. Silbergelatin on photographic paper. On request. Erwin Kraus

Juan Mayr has been documenting the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and its indigenous tribes, the Kogis, since the 80s. His photography and political work protected this unique ecosystem, and allowed the Kogis to recuperate their land, gaining access to the sea.  He was appointed environmental minister and works as a researcher.

work: 1983. Dia. 12,7 x 18 cm. Unique. 800€ excl. tax. Juan Myar.

Beatriz Eugenia Diaz, the pioneer of sound art in Colombia, composer and visual artist, unveiled the relation between music and text around the last Té de Bogotá tree in the Colombian capital,  a silent witness of the urbanization and violence.

work: Installation (7 Photographies + Audio 23:45 min. Double Channel, each 12 x25,5cm). 2019. Ed. 4/7. On request. Beatriz Eugenia Diaz.
To listen the sound piece CLICK HERE

If you have interest so see where the artists worked in Colombia, look at the following video with google earth.

In cooperation with