Accionando la memoria: arte urbano como dispositivo de expresión democrática y consciencia social sobre las ejecuciones extrajudiciales

Abstract

Artistic expressions as a means of making visible and denouncing diverse realities become necessary and relevant in a context like Colombia, where a variety of injustices and violent acts have occurred against the civilian population, some of these perpetrated by the State. This is why urban art is used as a medium in this research-creation project, to document extrajudicial executions through two images that reflect on these events and call upon individual and collective memory, The first uses the number 6,402, silhouettes, and accompanying text, framed in grayscale. The second alludes to the falsification and suppression of the victims’ identities through two layers of images. These interventions seek reflection through conscious observation by the public. Urban art, specifically paste-up, was used as the medium, which is relevant because it occupies a peripheral place in the hegemonic institutional circuit of the art world, allowing it to be directly displayed in urban spaces. These images were installed in the street, a democratic space where diverse actors converge Throughout the investigation, a historical and documentary review is made of what happened in the extrajudicial executions, in addition to some artistic expressions surrounding the relationship between art and politics, a transversal category in the investigation, and a compilation of urban art expressions related to extrajudicial executions, all to strengthen the horizon of meaning built throughout the project.