Bogota, Colombia
Fabio Melecio-Palacios (Nariño, Colombia, 1975) was awarded the Luis Caballero Prize for his work entitled BMR. The 36 year old artist took the Prize from the 2012 edition of the event. The recognition was presented to him on December 16 at the temporal headquarters of the Galería Santa Fé. BMR was conceived as a tribute to the artist¿s father who was an expert sugarcane cutter and a close follower and collaborator of the project. Caballero created an installation in which the ceiling was covered with machetes and sharpeners that hanged and that successfully transformed the exhibition space into something that resembled a sugar cane plantation. As part of the installation, Caballero also added a video that showed several plantations and a performance of his father and two other cutters sharping their machetes during the exhibition. The Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Sports of Bogota and the Instituto Distrital de las Artes (IDARTES) selected eight artists over the age of 35 to participate in the sixth edition of the Luis Caballero Prize. The eight participants in the call "Bogota Has Talent" that stood out from the rest are: Camilo Restrepo, for his work entitled (Figuritas en el Suelo) Figurines on the Floor; Mauricio Bejarano for his work entitled Murmullos (Whispers); Libia Posada for Materia Gris o la Persistencia de la Memoria (Gray Matter or the Persistence of Memory); Carol Young for Memoria y Taxonomías del Vacío (Memory and Taxonomies of the Void); Clemencia Echeverri for her Versión Libre (Loose Adaptation); Denise Buraye for Voy a Hacer un Horizonte Para Tu Espacio (I Am Going to Make a Horizon for Your Space); and Wilson Díaz for La Flor Caduca de la Hermosura de su Gloria (The Flower Expires by the Beauty of its Glory).