This is a collaboration with DAWN Denim where I got the chance to tell stories with stitches and painting over beautiful pieces to create unique wearable art.
This collection is inspired by war, peace and the line in between.
My story today is about the land of Magical Realism, the place where enchanted yellow butterflies flutter over red rivers of blood, the country with 1,900 bird species, and 50 years of war.
I was born in 1988 in the city of Bogotá, and watched the war going on out there through a T.V screen, always hearing horror stories about the Guerilla, an armed group who killed innocent people in the middle of the night and who dominated the front pages of daily newspapers that showed images of destroyed towns and piles of dead bodies. Little I knew back then the complexity of the armed conflict and how the Government and its corrupt narco-paramilitary ways were the ones to fear, and why they are responsible for the bloodbath that has been going on through half of a century.
Today, nothing has changed, in fact it’s getting worst, so after years of failed negotiations, betrayals, and sabotage of the peace process the whole country is getting together to demand social justice, they’ve been more than 2 months on the streets asking for the government to guarantee a live with dignity, education, opportunities and peace. But once again they are being subjugated in the most violent and merciless ways.
Police brutality is out of control, the media is being manipulated to create distractions from reality, and politicians just keep investing money in war while passing laws in the middle of the night while half of the country is sleeping and the other half is getting killed.
Between the Government’s repression and the unreachable dream of a healed country there is a whole generation that stands straight, resists, speaks loudly and with arguments, a creative and talented youth that won’t give up, they are such an inspiration and an example of what caring for the other means. Thanks!
This work is dedicated to all of those that are still standing and resisting in my beloved Colombia; to the ones that were silenced, to the social leaders, to the indigenous and black communities, to to the 6,402 and their families, to those who were disappeared and the ones who are still looking for them, for the ones who were left with nothing and for all that believe in peace, non-repetition, reparation, memory and truth.
If we stay quiet, they kill us, and if we speak, they kill us too. So, we speak.”
Cristina Taquinas Bautista, indigenous social leader, killed the 29th of October 2019, two weeks after saying this stament.
Doesn’t matter where we come from, we should talk about the importance of peace and how we can become peacemakers.
