I move across multiple languages, media and materials guided by the vibrations of counter-hegemonic embodied epistemologies, technologies and voices 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 todominant 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





Year
Work   
Medium   
Key topics

20
22
Between an ocean, a desert and a cloud
– a collaboration with artist Thomias Radin
and videographer David Lombana
>> currently in post-production
performance based photography,
video, sculpture
Caribbean collaboration: Guadeloupe and Barranquilla, bodily thinking, Caribbean thinking/sensing/being, dance, borderlands, coloniality, monuments



20
19
Ongoing


Movements.Manifesting.Monuments
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



20
09 Ongoing
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



20
21   
photography, poetry book
literature, city, Berlin, experiences of the urban, publication




20
21
photography, video,
performance relic
who writes her/his/another story?, challenging colonial archives, colonial legacy, disrupting narratives



20
21
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



20
20
photography, object
archives in the making, mnemonic artifacts, politic of forgetting, Abya Yala, archives of affection



20
20
photo-performance
bodily thinking, generational healing, self-portraits




20
20
still-life photography
archives in the making, land, environment, coloniality 




20
20
portrait, staged photography
extraordinary in the ordinary, covid pandemic, cuarantine, Colombia



20
20   
portrait series 
covid pandemic, cuarantine, Colombia, modernity/coloniality in the urban



20
19
still-life, documentary
photography, photographic
dialog
modernity/coloniality in the urban, materials as storytellers, readings of the urban




20
19
still-life, documentary
photography
modernity/coloniality in the urban, materials as storytellers, readings of the urban



20
18
still-life, documentary
photography 
land, caribbean, coloniality, disrupting narratives, new imageries, confronting colonial legacies




20
17  
portrait, still-life photography
land, politics of the imagination, imagineries and sense of a space




20
16
sculpture-based photography
land, necropolitics, Colombia, archives in the making, politics of forgetting



20
15 –
20
16
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 




20
14
staged photography, book dummy
magic realism, storytelling, 



20
10
Ongoing
photography
generational healing, bodily thinking, archives in the making