Ana González-COLOMBIA

Through her artistic practice González captures the duality of the natural world –

its fragile state due to humanity’s extraction of natural resources and the political and

spiritual power inherent to it. Drawing upon the landscapes of her native Colombia, and her collaborations with the indigenous communities that protect them, González’s work serves as both a warning of the gradual disappearance of a vital, historic ecosystem and a celebration of its sensual power.

In her Devastations series, González prints photographs of South American landscapes onto woven textiles which she then partially unravels by hand. González manipulates the

surfaces of her images to reflect the precariousness of these spaces; the jungles

surrounding the Amazon River, revered by some as the heart of the world, are threatened by the mining, ranching, and logging industries. González’s unraveling represents the slow, but consequential, disappearance of an ancient ecosystem. Her textiles preserve the potential of these spaces as sites of power, abundance, and renewal. As the artist states, When I think of the green of the tropics, I think about the damp soil, the hot land, the waterfalls, the mountains, the jungles… all that remains on this planet which allows us to breathe.” González’s works are a call torejuvenate the landscapes she depicts, an invitation towards stillness and reflection. She argues for a reorientation of our principles –from the monetary to the sacred values of the natural world.

An architecture graduate from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, Ana

González specialized in Art and Gender at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and completed a Master's Degree in Arts and Media (Photography-Printing-Publishing) at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in Paris, France. Her work is included in several private and public collections, including The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, the Havremagasinet Länskonsthall Museum in Sweden, the National Museum of Colombia and the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO). In addition, González has developed several social projects with the Colombian indigenous communities of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and humanitarian projects with the Nukak community in Guaviare and the Misak women in Cauca. She is currently working on the construction of a traditional house with the Tikuna women of the Colombian Amazon.

@anagonzalezrojas