by Siu Vásquez
This article is a testimony on water and the body of Siu Vásquez, one of the artists participating in the Colombian residency of the Room to Bloom project, curated by European Alternatives, Fondazione Studio Rizoma (Palermo), AthensSYN (Berlin), Museum of World Cultures (Gothenburg), Autonomi Akadimia (Athens) and Organizmo (Bogotà).
In these reflections, conceived after the artistic residency, Siu Vásquez takes us to the delicate surface of the water in the Mataven canal, presenting water as a living and mimetic element, an anthropological force capable of revealing intimate and political information about the body, power relations, identity, and privilege.
Room to Bloom is a platform that gives a voice to emerging feminist artists working on the themes of ecofeminism and postcolonial feminism. Founded in 2021, its aim is to create a central space in an art world dominated by patriarchal and colonialist dynamics.
There exists a living water mirror in the Mataven stream, originating from calm black waters, it breathes, grows, diminishes, reflects everything, and protects what it holds in its depths.
Within the human eye lies a search for reflection that tames behavior, a mimetic condition to what we see, and thus, reflections determine our way of existing. The sophisticated biotechnology of the water mirror has remained elusive to us, there is no faster update. But from water to glass, from glass to mirror, from mirror to screen, from screen to reality, and so on.
Existence changed its order in the presence of such a powerful and different reflection in Mataven. I recognized my atrophied body in relation to the reality of nature. I didn’t recognize my accustomed reflection, both in a literal and metaphorical sense.
Another order emerged, one where fish act as pollinators, tree trunks lie beneath the water, my untrained legs and arms, my body eaten by insects, my gut devoid of bacteria, and my knowledge in a constant and unsustainable tension that drew me closer and farther away from the humans around me. I try to remember what that different order referred to, but I cannot describe it since I am not in the presence of the water mirror.
Indigenous identity is often idealized because it remains unattainable, existing only in our imagination. It has been idealized as something despicable, and in the chaotic turn of the Anthropocene, it is idealized as the solution. Both forms, as opposing as they may seem, arise from the unattainable, from the same spirit.
“Things call out to each other,
the similar to the similar;
a dragon bringing rain;
a fan dispersing heat;
the place where an army has been,
overgrown with thorns…
Things, beautiful or repulsive,
all have an origin.
If it is believed that they construct destiny, it is because no one knows where their origin lies. There is no event that does not depend on something preceding it,
to which it responds because it belongs to the same category,
and that is why it moves.”
Dong Zhongshu
(Western Han Dynasty, China)
With this, I speak of indigeneity as an unattainable idea and provide evidence of confirmation through experience. I don’t want to be naive and fail to recognize my role in the predatory methods of the system. I am hungry and have appetites. Globalization and capitalism are deeply ingrained philosophical and emotional processes that generalize, impose, and consume knowledge.
There exists a predatory essence of diversity in the forms of existence, which includes technologies and biotechnologies of natural entities. It disguises itself as an attempt to understand them, to take bits and pieces from here and there to comprehend our own existence.
In other words, if a group of artists embark on an unusual and prolonged coexistence within an indigenous community, thanks to the work of organizers, budgets, and thoughts that make it possible, it represents, in a myriad of nuances, the same method that leads to the loss of cultural diversity and is a symptom of it. It is an ingenuously genuine attempt by capitalism in its predatory metastasis.
It should not be underestimated, and the evidence remains that an unknown reflection exists. I felt the order of existence dislocated, and a non-return to the cultural homogenization we impose from the depths of the system to which I belong. I am hungry, and with hunger, one becomes reckless, callous, and predatory.
It is impossible and naive to hack European public budgets for the benefit of cultural or environmental diversity because it is part of their very homogenizing strategy. However, being one of the cells of colonial capitalism’s metastasis, there was an exchange, satisfying the appetite by becoming prey of the predator, at least for a moment. I do not want to diminish the effort, and the methods of predatory homogenization will continue to become increasingly sophisticated. In the cannon fodder of these operations, something is returned and there is benefit for both parties in the exchange, but it is important to highlight the internal paradox of these processes—the insatiable devouring appetite is uncontrollable.
As a final and no less significant blow, the residency ended up in the UK, which was an equally unfamiliar and folkloric place. Even with appetite and hunger, inhabiting Mataven and London proved equally bewildering—another reflection, another river, the body equally devoid and unadapted in both cases.
Those who recognize themselves as predators learn not to hunt their own reflection, they are frightened by it, they hide and ignore it.
Siu Vásquez studied Fine Arts and Visual Arts at the National University of Colombia and the Javeriana University. She lives and works in Barichara, where she learned the textile trade and recently established relationships with peasant and indigenous communities for her artistic creation. Her research focuses on the materiality of painting, through the production of dyes and supports in weaving, understood as the formation of layers of color in the image. She finds her own pictorial language that combines pre-Hispanic references, her identity as a woman and the relationship between territory and community. Her work has been part of exhibitions in Colombia, Italy, Albania and the United Kingdom. In addition, her works are part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Bucaramanga, the collection of the Museum of Art of the Bank of the Republic and several private collections.