Magdalenas for the Cauca (Consuelo Valencia)

Photo credits: Rodrigo Grajales
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Yorlady Ruiz y Gabriel Posada

2010
327 rafts with portraits

This raft, made from wooden reeds native to the Trujillo region in Valle del Cauca, floats along the Cauca River. It carries the large silhouette of a woman bearing the portraits of her two missing sons. The work pays tribute to the mothers searching for their loved ones cast into Colombia’s river currents, denouncing the transformation of these rivers into cemeteries and their desecration as a result of armed conflict. It brings to light the tension between this reality and the enforcement of Articles 63 and 79 of the Constitution, which establish the State’s duty to protect environmental diversity and integrity, living ecosystems, and national parks as resources of the Nation.