ArteSumapz – Colombia 2025
I chatted excitedly with my new companion Tilly about, art, travel and neurodiversity as we weaved through traffic, headed south from Bogota to Artesumapaz.
Artesumapaz, near San Bernardo in the Cundinamarca region where the FARC guerrilla movement used to take their kidnap victims, who high up in the Sumapaz Paramo could see their home city, Bogota, only 100km away.
In 2019, ArteSumapaz was established on a former coffee plantation with a vision embedded in community ecosystems. They promote systemic change by helping communities work together by connecting local workers, international artists, and long-term residents in a developing intentional community.
ArteSumapaz adopts a philosophy inspired by traditions such as the Renaissance, Bauhaus, and Black Mountain College. Social justice issues like colonialism, racism, misogyny, and discrimination against trans people are viewed as deeply connected to environmental healing, and the centre supports artists in exploring these topics while promoting mutual exchange with local communities.
The participants were a dynamic group of young artists, primarily painters, writers, and musicians. I teamed up with music producer Santi Hernandez to produce a video for the jungle track “Fun & Games.” Using images from other visual artists, I experimented with effects in DaVinci Resolve, focusing on layering and colour to fulfil the brief of “make a trippy video.” I also recorded Cayley, who was creating a large multimedia portrait painting illustrating her experience with chronic illness. She painted over several of her own medical waste items like medication bottles and packaging from medical devices. She intended her painting to address her trauma creatively while also highlighting the challenges faced by those with chronic illness and the many coping mechanisms they employ.
Santi and Cayley are dancing in the experimental video below.
We saw several brilliant films, including Embrace of the Serpent by Ciro Guerra; this black-and-white movie follows the Amazonian shaman Karamakate on two journeys, thirty years apart, as he guides first a German ethnographer and then an American botanist in search of the rare plant yakruna. The film is captured in grainy, high-contrast black and white, reminiscent of vintage expedition photos, featuring shimmering rivers and thick, shadowy jungle. Immersive and dreamlike, it features slow, drifting camerawork alongside a constant background of insects, water, and chanting. After the screening, I stood at the edge of the alluring dark forest, feeling as though I had just stepped into the film. I thought of running wildly into the deep jungle and melting into nature.
We also viewed Holy Mountain, a 1973 Mexican avant-garde surrealist film directed, written, produced, co-scored, co-edited, and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. In his book Manual of Psychomagic, I encountered some questionable methods for giving up smoking involving eating Japanese food and cutting up chopsticks or breaking through artistic blocks with symbolic actions or rituals that aim to reconnect the artist with their creative self, facilitating a release of resistance and cultivating a more authentic expression of creativity.
I also read Tom Feiling’s book Short Walks from Bogotá and I have almost finished Wade Davis’s book, Magdalena: River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia, which combines memoir, history, and journalism to explore Colombia’s important Magdalena River. Reading them in their original location was really powerful. Feiling’s walks and encounters seemed immediate because the people and places he mentions were nearby, whereas Davis’s depiction of the Magdalena added depth and history to the landscape surrounding me.
While I was visiting, I met several members of the intentional community, such as Sally and her partner Diego. Sally kindly showed me her plot, featuring a hammock shelter, a composting toilet, and an outdoor shower, beautifully demonstrating sustainable living. The garden she tended was really inspiring, packed with diverse plants picked for their aesthetic appeal, practicality, and environmental benefits. Following the guidelines of companion planting, some species were chosen to deter insects. For example, aromatic herbs like mint and rosemary serve as natural repellents, whereas flowers like calendula and lavender draw in pollinators. This careful combination supports garden balance by minimising pests naturally and boosting biodiversity. I love the image below of the face in the leaves with cabbage hands.
Her partner Diego studied in France and spoke about his upcoming documentary Aterrizaje Forzoso (Memorias de un copiloto), set in mid-1970s Colombia when Medellín was expanding quickly, guerrilla movements were gaining momentum, and the cocaine trade was starting to develop.
I also met Roberto and his partner Caro, who were visiting for the weekend with their architect to plan their plot of land in the intentional community where they are constructing a bamboo building. They had spent the night in a thunderstorm with lightning, sleeping in a fellow resident’s corrugated iron structure designed to observe the surrounding nature, uncertain whether a lightning cable was installed to safely channel the thousands of volts from a lightning strike into the ground.
ArteSumapaz aims to be a comprehensive centre for creativity and renewal. Plans consist of growing the artist residency program, offering sponsored places to artists, establishing an alternative art school, and recruiting new members for the intentional community.
Future plans are centred around reforestation, organic agriculture, and establishing an art park plus a performing arts centre. ArteSumapaz plans to nurture cultural exchange and ecological stewardship by restoring 80% of its land as a natural reserve and partnering with global networks, demonstrating that art can drive sustainable living.
A lot of other things happened; Ric Dragon the director of ArteSumapaz ran a drawing workshop and the co-founder Pedro Crump, a pianist and composer ran a singing workshop. More to follow…….