Sights and Sounds: Colombia
Sights and Sounds: Colombia features new work by Oscar Muñoz, Elkin Calderón, Miguel Ángel Rojas, and Daniel Santiago Salguero, selected by Juan A. Gaitán.
For over a decade the Colombian government has been running a propaganda campaign to present the country as an attractive place for tourism and investment. It is full of clichés, some painfully colonial in tone, with images of beautiful nature and fun-loving people. Its one virtue is that its main vehicles aren’t television or magazines, but people. Tired of decades of violence and a mercurial economy, many Colombians in the 1990s embraced a different, more affirmative attitude toward their country, under the illusion—very popular in Colombia—that form follows attitude.
Thus, the campaign has had its positive effects, though some may prove only temporary. But among its negative effects is the deliberate and systematic obscuring of the vestiges and remnants of Colombia’s recent history of violence. Extreme violence throughout the 1980s, driven by the Colombian mafia, drastically transformed the values and everyday life of Colombian society, radically suppressing social consciousness and setting in place a sociopathic form of entrepreneurialism. This selection of videos shows a series of positions with respect to the persistence of violence and its effects, and the ongoing need to confront these phenomena.
Juan A. Gaitán
Curator
Juan A. Gaitán (b. Toronto, 1973) is the director of the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. He was curator of the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2014. From 2009 to 2011 he was curator at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. His writing has appeared in Afterall, The Exhibitionist, Fillip, and Mousse, among other publications.
About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video
This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.
Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.
Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.
The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.
Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs
Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.
Exhibition highlights
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Oscar Muñoz, still from Distopía (Dystopia), 2014, video, 22 min. Artwork © Oscar Muñoz, provided by Mor-Charpentier Gallery, Paris
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Elkin Calderón, still from Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), 2014, video, sound, 4 min. Artwork © Elkin Calderón
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Miguel Ángel Rojas, still from Economías Intervenidas (Intervened Economies), 2012, video, 5 min., 23 sec. Artwork © Miguel Ángel Rojas, provided by the artist and Casas Riegner, Bogotá
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Daniel Santiago Salguero, still from Tesoro - Diálogo entre Tiempos (Treasure – Dialogue between Times), 2013, video, sound, 5 min., 28 sec. Artwork © Daniel Santiago Salguero, provided by the artist and Instituto de Visión, Bogotá
