I am trying to figure out how to deal with the wildness inside me after visiting Colombia. Apparently, I am very much so ‘una Bogotana’. The locality of Bogota is in my features, my face, my eyes, my nose, my ears, my hair, my legs, my shape. In my mentality, my attitude, my sociality. It is everywhere. I haven’t been able to see it before. But now I do. I feel different, it’s hard to explain. To my self and to another. But I guess I have an obligation to find my own voice on a personal level as well as on an artistic level. There really is no way back. In Colombia, the trees grow wild, next to each other, on top of each other, into each other. Blending. Morphing. A leafy world of overlapping branches and trees. The canopy of the highlands and the rainforest. My friend from Brasil told me how she experiences nature in Western Europa as little gardens, domesticated. Without any wildness.
How then to articulate my own authorship, being the embodiment of infinite intersections including my biography being the mixture of wildness and domestication?
‘Difference without separation.’ Making connection is important. Connecting the visible with the invisible, the material with the immaterial. Using nature as a metaphor. Developing a collective sensorial practice in order to investigate the notion of ‘Esuama’ as an intersectional possibility. Esuama means ‘Place of authority’, to the Kogi, an indigenous tribe living today in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in the northern part of Colombia. Esuama, here authority becomes an intersection. Where the priest can connect to the spiritual world, connect the material with the immaterial. The Kogi speak of a sacred geography, specific locations in the landscape where connections are made, were ceremonies are being held and offerings take place. They believe taking care of nature is their destiny. Finding a balance between the human condition and the natural resources that surround them.

Images from The Kitchen presentation at DAI, 19-02-2018, Epen (NL).
How to articulate my own authorship, being the embodiment of infinite intersections, including my biography being the mixture of wildness and domestification?