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Cuerpopermeable VIII: Neblina

Permeablebody VIII: Fog

Cuerpopermeable IX: Laguna

Permeablebody IX: Lake

Cuerpopermeable III: Viento

Permeablebody III: Wind

2021

Video

In the foggy páramo near Bogota, De Valdenebro stages acts of becoming different states of hydrological cycles, making her body permeable to mist, lake, and wind. The páramos, Colombia’s highland ecosystems located 3000 metres above sea level, are fundamental to the health of the country’s water networks. that flows through the country’s freshwater networks and out to the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean seas. These videos are part of an art research project called Cuerpospermeables (Permeablebodies) which documents intimate contact zones that the artist instigates between bodies.

In these videos, the artist performs acts of integration into other elemental states of being, where air and water act upon the human body, entering and caressing, buffeting and inflating. In Laguna (Lake), the action takes on an ecopolitical dimension, as the artist makes a ritual offering to the bodyof water. De Valdenebro takes solid gold cufflinks (an heirloom from her own family) cast in the form of Colombia’s national crest, smelting them into an organic form, then depositing them back into the watery depths. In this contemporary ritual, she reverses the process of extraction which exerts pressure on the country’s páramos and other liquid territories where mining agendas push into protected ecosystems.