Estenopéicas Rurales
The civil and armed conflicts in Colombia arise from a serious need for a viable agrarian policy for the farming population. Since ‘La Violencia’ (a ten-year civil war, from 1948 to 1958, between the Conservative and the Liberal Party of Colombia) the Altiplano Cundiboyacense has become a central location of the protests.
‘Estenopéicas Rurales’ is a series of triptychs of peasant homes in this area, portraying the courtyards, walls and interiors of the houses of several families, as testimonies of everyday life in a rural landscape. The locations were selected by the families living there as records of everyday resistance to a violent environment.
From of a cluster of family farms, that were or are used as bases for revolt, secrets and disappearances, Marcos Ávila Forero transforms each house into a large camera itself, by using the pinhole camera technique. The resulting black and white images resemble those from the photographic archives of the La Violencia-era, but also reveal contemporary landscapes, distinguished by the absence of persons. The interior of the houses cannot be perceived, they remain as dark as the stories they harbour. A video documents the context of the place, presenting images of the houses from the outside, revealing the landscape in which they are standing.
