Art that offers a reflection on sociopolitical issuesfrom climate change to instability and authoritarianismwas everywhere in Bogot this fall, as the 15th annual ARTBO art fair opened in the Colombian capital. I think art has a possibility of creating or nurturing citizens and individuals that are more sensitive, or more critical, and have the capacity to put themselves in someone elses shoes, said ARTBO director Mara Paz Gaviria when the fair opened last week. I dont believe that art has a particular role in society, I just strongly believe in the possibility of the arts, and what it can express about society, and about our conflicts. So, with that in mind, heres our pick of the standout artists at the fair, and at the National Salon of Artists show, which runs concurrently at museums around Bogot until November.

Carolina Caycedos Apariciones at the National Salon of ArtistsThis nine-and-a-half-minute film by Los Angeles-based Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo is featured in the National Salon of Artists and is on display until November 3 at MAMBO, the Bogot Museum of Modern Art. For the film, Caycedo stages a series of encounters between indigenous and Afro-Latino dancers and the spaces of LAs Huntington Library and Gardens. Its a beautiful work about colonialism, hierarchies of information, the naivet of trying to organize the world, and the rebellion of the past. The dancers move through the institution like ghosts from past worlds; or the physical embodiment of traditions of knowledge that arent yet archived, performing rituals of joy and divination.If youd like to see more, the artist talks about this piece in a video produced for the Huntington here.

A still from Manuel Correas La Forma del Presente (The Shape of Now).

Manuel Correas La Forma del Presente (The Shape of Now) at ARTBOOne of the standout works of ARTBO was presented in the fairs Artecmara section for emerging Colombian artists. London-based, Medelln-born Manuel Correas 70-minute documentary The Shape of Now is about the conflict that has raged in Colombia since the 1960s between the government, guerrillas including the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and drug cartels, which has claimed an estimated 260,000 lives, and the ensuing peace process. Correas film is about how historical memory is constructed, and depicts the human need to define past events in order to move on from them. He follows survivors of war, ex-combatants from all sides, professors, scientists, a photojournalist and a peace negotiator as they wrestle with what has taken place, and with the nature of truth itself. Certain scenes are so surreallike a group of mothers of the disappeared who travel to prisons to perform plays about the conflict for audiences that include some of the same fighters who may have taken their sonsthat they merit comparison to the 2012 documentary about Indonesian war crimes The Act of Killing. The film is also memorable for a logician who explains how truth exists beyond binary categories, and for neuroscientists who attempt to study ex-combatantss levels of empathy by attaching electrodes to their heads and asking them questions like, When you watch a movie, do you identify with the protagonist?

Teresa Margolless Chircalero en un pozo de Juan Fro. Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier.

Teresa Margolless Chircalero en un pozo de Juan Fro at mor charpentier gallery at ARTBOConceptual artist Teresa Margolles examines the causes and consequences of violence in her works, with a particular emphasis on death and the body. Born in Mexico, she originally trained as a pathologist and holds a degree in forensic medicine and science communication from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both forensics and communicationespecially the need to speak for those who have been silencedare key themes in her work. This photograph, titled Chircalero en un pozo de Juan Fro, or Brickmaker in a well at Juan Fro, depicts a moment in the production of 3,000 clay bricks when and holds up a shroud that has been soaking in the water. The shroud was used to cover the bodies of people killed in recent violence on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, and the bricks were fired in a kiln in the border town of Juan Fro, where guerrillas previously incinerated the bodies of war victims. This chircalero, like the dead, stays invisible behind his shroud.

Adriana Bustoss Burning Books IXII. Courtesy of Galera Nora Fisch.

Adriana Bustoss Burning Books IX at at ARTBOArgentinian artist Adriana Bustoss process is heavily informed by research, and her work often incorporates found images she uncovers from various archives. By placing these images in new contexts, Bustos generates new meanings, and she often returns to themes of the construction of femininity, science and rationalism versus magical thinking and the censorship of ideas. In her Burning Books series, she painstakingly draws and places on bookshelveswhich she identifies by searching library records for suppressed titles. The resulting work questions the limits and consequences of censorship.

Follow this link:

Highlights from ARTBO 2019, the Colombian Art Fair, and Beyond - Cultured Magazine