DESIGN AND VIOLENCE
Textile Project intended as a critic and PROTEST towards local Colombian (South America) ELITE and GOVERNMENT, also towards the INTERNATIONAL community involved in this ongoing CONFLICT.
The word "ojo" (=oh hoh) in Spanish means "eye". In Colombia, the expression "OJO!" is used by the general public in informal speech to say "Beware!", "Keep attentive!"
At OJO! we claim Empathy, Awareness for Colonial and Extractivist practices, Respect for Historical Memory, Peace Process, and the Truth. We claim for the will to SEE, to confront the harsh burden we all have to carry for this tragedy...
We use our design tools such as colour palette, material, and imagery to criticize the notions of TASTE that permeate all of this.
None of the pieces are for sale.
All images of own work have @copyright
Bulletproof Vests / Body Armour
Soundtrack by @gregormerchan
ASPHYXIA by Gregorio Merchán
This video and song, made by a close talented musician friend were released at the same time huge urban protests were taking place in my city Bogotá. It was one of the inspirations for the "coherent design context" for my textile designs in this project. I am from Bogotá and I would have been there protesting if I wasn´t here in Scotland, safe and cosy (a bit colder and immersed in a pandemic though...but just to give you a bit of scale of the problems we face in named "third world countries" so to speak...) studying an MFA in Textile design...Designing textile prints for safeguard clothing would eventually safeguard me and my peers from the abuse of power and oblivion that implies forgetting one´s identity and empathy towards society.
Just like the Mola is a fragment of a protective sacred garment, the context for my textile designs is safeguard clothing. More specifically and symbolically speaking, body armours protecting civilians from abusive authorities and from preventing them from forgetting their historical memory and embracing their identity.
Carrying these armours implies lifting a heavyweight like the literal weight of these multilayered constructed garments. It also implies accepting all the layers of this conflict including your share.
Each layer is printed on a symbolical material, silk, linen, or even intricate bulletproof fabric.
Video by @joseluiscote
