Ana María Millán

Elevation, 2019

“Elevation” (2019) is a collaborative project with a group of artists at Bogotá’s Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO) to work around the myth of origin of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The participants in this process are based on the narrative strategies of a comic book of the movement named “Marquetalia, Raíces de la Resistencia” (Marquetalia, Roots of Resistance). The comic book narrates in a simple way and through key characters how a group of militant communists and liberals are expelled from public life during the historical process understood as “The Violence” (1948 – 1958). Their exodus is caused by the homicide of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, socialist candidate to the presidency, as well as the resulting social uprisings of the “Bogotazo” in 1948. In 1954, during the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957), the Colombian Constitution prohibited the military or collaboration with international communism. Mobilized communists and liberals went into self-exile in the town of Marquetalia, in the Department of Tolima, a mountainous area of central Colombia. These would be among the first historical antecedents of the movement later known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP), relevant actors in the armed conflict that lasted until 2016. Currently, there is a peace agreement and the once FARC-EP is a legal political party: “COMUNES”.

“Elevation” is a role-playing game and an experience in 3D animation, a contact zone to renegotiate and reformulate the affective, social and cultural memories of a society after the trauma. The artist creates a world of own rules, the participants of the process construct avatars with supernatural powers and re-stage events, formulating outcomes and other possible present and future scenarios. The artwork also promotes exchange between key influencers and subcultures of the Net at a technological, cultural and communicational level to generate an experience of reconciliation and social re-imagination.

Ana Maria Millán. Cali, Colombia, 1975.

Lives and works in Berlin

Complete bio at

http://anamariamillan.info/