Gabriela Pinilla
1983 | Bogotá, Colombia
Lives in Bogota
Visual artist and university professor, master in arts from Universidad Tadeo Lozano and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota. In her work, the political history of the conflicts in Colombia, ignored and erased by official narratives, is recovered through archival research that, depending on the particular history discovered, can be presented as mural painting, drawing, print, installation, video or book. She has taken part in solo shows at Casa de la Memoria, Medellín (2021); Museo de Antioquia, Medellín (2019); and group shows at the Denver Art Museum, USA (2022); and at Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, São Paulo (2015). She has been granted awards such as the Creation Grant, Ministry of Culture, Colombia (2012) and the prize for individual exhibitions, Secretariat of Culture, Bogota (2010). She lives in Bogota.
Guerrillera, montaña, compañera, 2023
Mural painting and book, 8,40(H) x 6(W) m
Guerrillera, montaña, compañera is a mural, 8.40 meters high by 6 meters wide, from the project titled Between water and roots, La Chiqui’s struggle in the Chocó Mountains. The work also contains an illustrated book and proposes the construction of a graphic account of the story of Carmenza Cardona Londoño (a.k.a. La Chiqui), a militant in the 19 de Abril / M-19 Movement, a guerrilla group that emerged in Colombia in the 1970s. The work raises some fundamental questions about the violence the Colombian state perpetrated against political opponents through the installation of martial law, use of torture, violation of the rights of political prisoners, intimidation of artists and writers, systematic use of assassination and “disappearances,” and the general state of misery and abandonment of certain regions of the country.