Growing up amidst an endless struggle between rebel groups and the government army, I never noticed how much is war rhetorics and glorification of the struggle is prominent until today. Through performance, photography, video and text I search my own place in the general historiography in which as an individual I’m taken hostage and try to heal my own wounds.

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With this work I try to trace out this violence, expose it, question it, and heal from it. I work with the imperative need to reevaluate the ideals in which a country is build upon and is kept together, how our past is constructed and our history presented.

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Song for the father is a triptych video-installation with images taken from the Royal Museum for Armed Forces and Military History of Brussels and a brutally torn pomegranate, imported by the Spanish colonialists as a national symbol of Colombia. The text is a rework of the Colombian national anthem stripped of all geographical references, creating a universal meaning.

 

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Song for the father was showcased in the collective exhibition 'FRONT' curated by soundcast in the Concertgebouw Brugge

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http://www.frontconcertgebouw.be/expo/juliana-canal-paternina

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