During June the work will be exhibited that, through drawing, portrays 16 cases of extrajudicial executions committed between 2008 and 2009
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The Sextante Gallery in Bogotá will be the setting for the exhibition ‘Los hombres del sol’ that portrays the faces of the young victims of extrajudicial executions. PHOTO: Courtesy of the artist, María Fernanda Patiño
Three acts make up the work‘The men of the sun’, which will focus on making visible the portraits of several cases of young people who were extrajudicially executed, in what is known as ‘false positives’ of young people from Soacha -Cundinamarca-. In fact, the cruelty of the events that occurred between 2008 and 2009 has been exposed in various transmedia formats, but now it is time for the drawing to expose a small part of these crimes.
The work was initiative of the artist María Fernanda Patiño, who through this gallery exposes the faces of young people presented by State agents as casualties in combat; in fact, not only will the portraits made from the drawing be shown, but it also shows a paradox from the name that this sample receives.
While rank-and-file soldiers of the Army committed extrajudicial crimes on the orders of their superiors, they received decorations in the form of suns, the same symbol that represents the town of Soacha, which, in Chibcha, translates Sua (Sun) and Cha (Male). From this, one of the many “absurd coincidences, so common in our nation” as the artist describes it, the exhibition that also belongs to the artistic group Conscious Art is born.
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The Sextante Gallery will be the stage where the drawings will be exhibited, which, together, make up three different moments that are part of the complete exhibition and that induce the viewer to see beyond the faces of the young people and enter those natural landscapes that they saw , in many of these cases, how they were killed to make them pass as members of illegal armed groups.
The men of the sun: the three moments
This sensory narrative, executed by the artistic director of Arte Consciente, Juan Alberto Galvis, shows a work that, in addition, is perceived by the audience as changing elements in order to incline the emotions of the attendees depending on the movement, the word and image.
Each act will take place on three different days; in fact, the first was this Thursday in an exclusive presentation for the press and special guests; the second will be on June 9 at 6:00 p.m. -with doors open to the public- and the last one will be shown on the 30th of the same month at 6:00 p.m. m.
It is worth mentioning that another memorable exhibition regarding the crimes committed by state agents was hosted by the Memory, Peace and Reconciliation Center. It is a visual exhibition headed by several mothers from Soacha photographed underground, making an allegory of the way in which the bodies of their relatives were found in the middle of the conflict.
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‘Footprints of Disappearance’ is another exhibition that recounts this scourge from an artistic point of view. Exposes the cases of Urabá, Palace of Justice and Nukak territory”, which exhibits the investigative findings of a project between the Truth Commission and Forensic Architecture, an investigation agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Suffocation is another literary sample that compiles nine stories of characters that inhabit localities in the country that have been the scene of the armed conflict; La paramera, which tells the stories of peasant women in the Sumapaz paramo; and Celebrations, which tells the story of two brothers who seek to claim memory in the midst of a case of so-called ‘false positives’.