I move across multiple languages, media and materials guided by the vibrations of counter-hegemonic embodied epistemologies and technologies from Améfrica Ladina* and the Caribbean, where I come from.

I work with their narrative, aesthetic, sonic and performative characteristics to craft stories that challenge canonical conceptions of being, time and memory and defy the rupture and objectification imposed by colonization and reinforced by coloniality.

In my works, I investigate the potentialities of the diasporic being and diasporic knowledges, the his/her/diverse-storytelling as counter-response to dominant narratives and I explore the personal and subjective to craft performative acts that unveil internalized imposed categories and norms.

My staged, documentary, sculpture and performance based photographs, performance relics and sound works are mainly informed by the hybrid character of magic-realistic storytelling, African and afro-diasporic epistemologies, and the Caribbean thinking/feeling/sensing.

I see my work as acts of decolonial imagination,
acts of communication between pluralities,
acts of love.



*Léila Gonzalez




index of works
 >>portraits   >>curatorial


  

On Caribbean Afro-diasporic sonic and bodily knowledges
︎Body of work: Daughters of the Muntu
︎Between an Ocean, a Desert and a Cloud

On monuments and archives in the making
︎Movements.Manifesting.Monuments
︎Bocas de Ceniza/ Ash Mouths

On challenging colonial History-storytelling
︎Manufacture of Distorted Images
︎Espejos Mutantes / Mutant Mirrors

On another-history-storytelling
︎Aus Hand und Stein / From Hands and Stones

On experiences of the Urban
︎sieben utopische dinge – Anthrazit
︎Concrete Discontinuities

︎Supporting Surfaces
On Colonialities
︎Primero Estaba el Mar / In the Beginning was
the Sea
︎Uncomfortable Mindscapes
︎Concrete Discontinuities
︎Supporting Surfaces

On Nation-state imaginaries and politics
︎Tierra Común - Fosa Común
︎Show me your Europe
︎Echando Pa’lante

On bodily-thinking and generational healing
︎De las Raíces / From the Roots
︎Self-portraits / Self-fictions

On magic-realistic storytelling in photography
︎hierzulande / In this Land
︎Aus Hand und Stein / From Hands and Stones





Work   
Medium  
Key topics

A Labor Theory of Artistic Value
a collaboration with artist and filmmaker
Mary Jirmanus Saba
a performance that combines video projection, a delivered text, and a performative act of cultural maintenance (soon online)
gendered reproductive labour, the reproductive labour of motherhood, artworld, critique



Between an ocean, a desert and a cloud

– a collaboration with artist Thomias Radin
and videographer David Lombana
video, photography, sculpture
>> currently in post-production.




Movements.Manifesting.Movements

Long-term interdisciplinary visual
and performance project + online platform

www.movementsmanifestingmonuments.com
(coming soon!)

performance, staged photography,
video, sound, online platform 
who writes her/his/diverse-stories?, herstory-storytelling in public space, corpo-monuments, colonial narratives, anti-colonial responses, intersectional feminism, occupying and transgressing the traditional concept of monuments



Body of work:
Daughters of the Muntu: On ancestral bodily and sonic knowledges of afro-diasporic women in the Colombian-Caribbean.



sound piece   
afro-diasporic epistemologies, caribbean, music, bullerengue, rueda de bullerengue (bullerengue circle) dancing stories, baile cantao (sung dance)
(2021 - Ongoing) Cantaoras
portrait series, interviews
afro-diasporic epistemologies, storytelling, cantaoras (singers), bullerengue, caribbean, sonic and bodily knowledges


(2021 - Ongoing) Home as a photo album
– working title
documentary photography
family photo album, non-linear his/her-story-storytelling, archives, archives of affection


portraits, documentary
photography
afro-diasporic epistemologies, afro-caribbean literature, womxn, Manuel Zapata Olivella, embodied landscapes


documentary photography
ancestral sonic and bodily knowledges, family tradition, bullerengue, Colombian-Caribbean



photography, poetry book
literature, city, Berlin, experiences of the urban, publication




photography, video,
performance relic

who writes her/his/another story?, challenging colonial archives, colonial legacy, disrupting narratives



Espejos Mutantes
/ Mutant Mirrors
>> currently in post-production.
Staged photography, performance,
sculpture

land, who writes her/his/another story?, maps, cartography, colonial legacy, disrupting narratives



photography, object
archives in the making, mnemonic artifacts, politic of forgetting, Abya Yala, archives of affection



photo-performance

bodily thinking, generational healing, self-portraits




still-life photography
archives in the making, land, environment, coloniality




portrait, staged photography
extraordinary in the ordinary, covid pandemic, cuarantine, Colombia



portrait series

covid pandemic, cuarantine, Colombia, modernity/coloniality in the urban



still-life, documentary
photography, photographic
dialog

modernity/coloniality in the urban, materials as storytellers, readings of the urban




still-life, documentary
photography

modernity/coloniality in the urban, materials as storytellers, readings of the urban



still-life, documentary
photography
land, caribbean, coloniality, disrupting narratives, new imageries, confronting colonial legacies




portrait, still-life photography

land, politics of the imagination, imagineries and sense of a space





sculpture-based photography
land, necropolitics, Colombia, archives in the making, politics of forgetting



sculpture-based and staged photography,
collage
who writes her/his/another story?, history-storytelling, magic realism, post-war, re-imaginning archives, re-imaging history, agency to narrate




staged photography, book dummy

magic realism, storytelling,



photography
generational healing, bodily thinking, archives in the making