Winner of the Prix Découverte des Amis du Palais de Tokyo 2012

The works of Marcos Avila Forero (born in Paris, 1983, lives and works in Bogotá and Paris) are immersed in the complex and sometimes violent reality of political and social situations he presents not as an impartial observer, but by introducing into his work the elements that constitute it (materials, stories, symbols). His works thus bear witness to an encounter, a story or a journey. They are micro-fictions made of flotsam and jetsam, that seek less to demonstrate or document, and more to bring into opposition times and places that never should have met.

Zuratoque, a shantytown in the Santander region of Colombia, is the subject of this exhibition. Some 350 families live there, most of them displaced by armed conflicts in the countryside. Having met them, Marcos Avila Forero is exhibiting seven of their testimonies: life-size photographs of a jute bag onto which the story is written of a family who had to flee the countryside. The artist then asked each family to fray the jute bag and use the resulting yarn to make a pair of alpargatas, or traditional sandals. Since two of the accounts were sung, these are presented aurally. An extract from a drawing of the Cordillera de los Cobartes (Mountain range of the cowards) through which farmers fleeing armed conflict must pass, and made using 317km of jute yarn, completes the pieces.

Curator : Daria de Beauvais