Now in its fourteenth edition, the Proyecto TESIS, which brings together the best degree projects in plastic and visual arts from across Colombia, once again sets out to explore the complex labyrinth of contemporary artistic production.
Threads and labyrinths
Now in its fourteenth edition, the Proyecto TESIS, which brings together the best degree projects in plastic and visual arts from across Colombia, once again sets out to explore the complex labyrinth of contemporary artistic production.
The set of selected TESIS projects has several vectors that are, in turn, possible clues for delving into the themes that guide recent graduates; the country is in ferment, our society has become complex, diverse, interconnected, global, and fragmented.
The most pronounced vectors dig into the relationships between humankind and nature; there is a reflective and critical return to the uses we give to natural resources, including landscape, fauna, flora, and the growing urbanization of reserves, natural habitats, and biological lungs.
The recovery of land, the reinterpretation of territory, the strengthening of community, memory, and identity appear constantly in the works presented here, establishing new relationships, readings, and analyses.
At the same time, concepts such as home, power, territory, gender, and knowledge are deconstructed from a post-structuralist perspective, with the consequent concern for identifying and questioning hierarchies.
I will draw a parallel between two figures that allow me to establish vantage points and conceptual anchors; Ariadne and Arachne, these two mythical figures linked by thread, help us weave the discourse. Arachne's astonishing skill for weaving stories that scandalized and unleashed the wrath of the gods reveals the power of representation to expose realities — in this case the infidelities of the gods — to the point that she is condemned by Athena to remain trapped in the body of a spider.
Ariadne, harassed by the Minotaur, is freed by Theseus, who had previously received a ball of thread that helped him find his way back through the labyrinth — an allusion to the power of connections to defeat oppression.
Faced with this labyrinthine reality, a good alternative is creativity, the emancipation of ideas made concrete in actions.
Art has the ability to transform materials and concepts; for this reason the works presented in the Proyecto TESIS 2017 are, in turn, initiatives of change, of coexistence, of reflection, of reconciliation, of tolerance, of identity, of memory.
All the recent graduates have a labyrinth awaiting them, but they hold the guiding thread of their own wit and creativity to find the way out.
GUSTAVO A. ORTIZ S.
MAC Director