Juan Manuel Echavarria
Speaking Truth Through Image
Lecture: 6/26, 6 pm, Tipton Hall, CSF

Since 1995 Echavarria’s work has been concerned with finding new ways to document Colombia’s grotesquely violent civil conflict. The conflicts between the army, left wing guerillas and right-wing paramilitaries can be traced back to the 1950s, and the drug cartels to the 1980s. Echavarría’s disturbingly beautiful pictures evoke the dread and human waste of this endless war without presenting a succession of bloody corpses. In February 2005, Echavarría's videos Bandeja de Bolívar / Bolívar's Platter, Guerra y pa / War and Peace, and Bocas de Ceniza / Mouths of Ash were shown in New York on the opening night of MOMA's Documentary Fortnight. In June Mouths of Ash opened in the Latin American pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Echavarría's work speaks to the pervasiveness and the frightening 'normality' of violence in Colombia after fifty years of civil war. By turning his camera to the blind spots in the social fabric of Colombia, Echavarría creates a record of violence everywhere.