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
River Mola...Dispersed
This group of textiles was born the day I read the firemen report referenced in the "BASTA YA Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity" (2016) general report from the Historical Memory Group of the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation about their work around the river Cauca in Colombia. In this report, several statements from ordinary people are compiled in which they narrate episodes and findings in the area nearby "Marsella" town.
"BODIES CAME DOWN LIKE RICE"
You might find this gore, I do too...Unsophisticated...Tasteless...I find gore that I can´t nor can many Colombians travel our rivers, I find gore that I nor many Colombians cannot eat fish from our rich rivers...Simply because they are a mass grave...
Something disturbingly beautiful comes from this, you don´t want to like it, nor want I, I don´t like it...My only hope is that our richness as a beautiful territory inhabited by amazing and diverse people like the gold that is present in our lands will help us find a way through this...
The Mola from which this group was created, is composed of four different layers. These create a new territory, a new kind of rivers...The first layer of this new territory is a Colombian military fabric, the generic one, used by mostly all the armies that walk around my country, "legal" and "illegal" if only one could tell the difference...
Textile printing and construction techniques are symbolic as well as the material in which the new prints coming from these reverse appliqué experiments are printed. Linen, silk for example...traditionally thought of as the most luxurious and "sophisticated" fabrics in history.
SOME OF THESE TEXTILES INCLUDE BULLETPROOF FABRIC, THE ONE USED FOR THE MAKING OF VESTS AND SAFEGUARD CLOTHING.