Política de la imagen: Videoarte contemporáneo en Colombia

The exhibition Políticas de la imagen: Videoarte contemporáneo en Colombia, curated by Christian Padilla, opened May 10 in Rennes, France, as part of the Oodaaq Festival of Videoart and Poetic Images.

Christian Padilla's curatorship seeks to confront the mass-media use of information with artistic gestures. According to Padilla, socio-political conflicts in Colombia have been instrumental to the creation of a collective imaginary that expresses itself in art through reflections and discursive commentaries around such issues and the way to deal with them. This curatorship reflects on the use of video in art as an instrument to unmask the medium's communicative and manipulative powers.

For Padilla, video is a tool that promotes self-critique and self-reflection. At the same time, it features elements of selection and editing that translate, according to the curator, into a "politics of the image": a decision is made as to what to show and what not to show. The phrase also alludes to the issue of internal politics in Colombia and the way in which they are responsible for perpetuating a constant use of media-based deviations that generate deformities and misinterpretations among the public.

Works like Carlos Castro's El ojo que no sufre no vive, which depicts Simon Bolívar's statue in Bogotá's central square being devoured by hungry pigeons, or, along the same lines, Germán Arrubla's Dieta, also a digestive action—this time with some beetles eating Colombia's constitution—redefine and reinterpret the discursive power of the moving image and the critical quest of a generation of Colombian artists.

The artists featured in the show are Fabián Cano, Iván Argote, Mario Opazo, Erika Jaramillo, Rosemberg Sandoval, Julián Santana, Andrés Orjuela, Laura Martín, Alejandra Rincón, Laura Hernández, Miler Lagos, Carlos Castro, Germán Arrubla, and Fernando Pertúz. The show unfolds in such a way that the work of these artists is on view at different locations throughout the city of Rennes for an entire month.

The Guerrero Arts Academy will present a twin exhibition on June 5 (single date) at 7:00 pm. Admission to this event is free.