Photo : courtesy of the artist
Our Song to War — Conversation with Juanita Onzaga
I spoke with Onzaga in Bogotá, where she was developing her first feature film, The Landscapes That You Seek.
Gwynne Fulton : Your film contests dominant visual narratives of the Colombian conflict. Historically, access to the conflict was limited to embedded reporting, resulting in a view framed by the state, from the perspective of the military. Attentive to discourses in contemporary art concerning resistance and memorialization, your work offers another narrative that reflects on our responsibility to the dead and to a past that is never past but is written into the fabric of the world through song and ritual gesture. Violence has left its spectral traces in the land and, in particular, the waters of the Atrato River, which witnessed one of the worst massacres of the conflict.
