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Beehive
Date of residence: October 2019
About the Artist
La Colmena is a collective of activists and artists dedicated to the anonymous and collective creation of detailed drawings without copyright, which represent themes and stories that currently overwhelm the planet, in social, environmental and especially cultural and ecological diversity. The premise with which they work is similar to that of insects in a honeycomb, by promoting the union between people to collectively build from the knowledge of each member of the community. The members of the group call themselves and the people they collaborate with as bees; They work to establish connections with communities and different organizational groups that seek creative ways to speak out and fight for social and environmental justice.
Through drawings they tell stories of resistance and organization to address the immense themes of this overwhelming world in which we live and present them in accessible and welcoming formats. In the illustrations there are powerful tools of popular education, with the dual purpose of sowing seeds of critical thinking and supporting organizational processes. The stories have been collected through the oral traditions of each community, the group listens to understand and capture the complexity of the situation. Graphics are collaboratively created, which means there is no artist, storyteller, story collector, or great teacher.
This is how the Pollination process was born, a network or a swarm of decentralized people who use art, culture and communication proposals in order to strengthen the pedagogical and training processes of different communities, through the dissemination of graphic campaigns . This swarm of bees become word-to-image translators to tell the stories of the communities' struggles. This is a self-managed, autonomous and anonymous collective process.
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Proposal
During its residency, the La Colmena collective will work with the people of Ríos Vivos Antioquia, their allies, local artists and professionals from the natural sciences related to this cause. To investigate and document the importance of the biodiversity lost in the gunboat communities, which will allow us to generate reflections on the effects on non-human victims of violence in the most threatened ecosystem in the country, the tropical dry forest.
Through the diversity of elements contained in the dry forest and its species, which represent the feelings of people and their families along with their territory, a documentation methodology will be developed through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) process, on the current situation of the people and territories affected by Hidroituango, within the framework of the JEP hearing in the city of Medellín, which will make it possible to make visible the environmental and social damage that Hidroituango has brought, such as the importance of the dry forest for the social fabric of the gunboat communities.