The multi-part series Souvenir plays with the notion of the souvenir as an object kept or brought back as a reminder of a particular event, place, or person. This mixed media work combines photography and materiality to address the lived experience of the Indigenous Wayuu people in Colombia, juxtaposed with the extractive reality of coal mining on their ancestral lands. The work was developed for the exhibition series “How to Stay – a wandering exhibition.”

_\*Supported by the 2023 “Kultur ans Netz” program of the state of Saxony-Anhalt and the Saxony-Anhalt Investment Bank.\*The project “How to Stay – a wandering exhibition” was conceived by Isabelle Hucht, Julia Tiefenbach, Eri Hayashi, Jeronim Horvat, Thomas Kober, and Jorge Sánchez Di Bello._

SOUVENIR | Hof 2023 – 2024

The installation "HERRENLOS DIE INVASION" tells the story of the largest hippopotamus population outside the African continent, located in Colombia. It visually summarizes what began more than 40 years ago on the infamous Hacienda Nápoles, the estate of notorious drug lord and terrorist Pablo Escobar, former head of the Medellín Cartel.

**_Gate_**_: Aluminum lacquer, 300 × 400 × 50 cm |_ **_4 Trophy Heads:_** _Audiobox, wood, 45 × 40 × 45 cm |_ **_Hippopotamus amphibius:_** _Serie of 160, plaster, 4 × 15 × 8 cm_

HERRENLOS DIE INVASION (Ownerless: The Invasion)

“Amarre”, produced during the A.i.R. BLECH: Tres Visiones / Drei Visionen residency, is an evolution of my project “Ranchería.” The work explores the chessboard as a metaphor for territorial control and colonial perspectives. Symbols of Wayuu clans, tied with colored threads, are anchored onto chessboards within a red thread grid overlaid on a map of La Guajira, Colombia. The installation reflects on rootedness, spiritual and ritual bonds, and the struggles to remain in a territory, played out through sixteen pawns.

Amarre

Huaqueo reflects on the destruction of cultural heritage and the displacement of ethnological objects and images. Inspired by the Preuss Collection, the work references the Quechua term huaca (sacred place or deity) and its derivative huaquear (to loot or desecrate archaeological sites). Looting, or huaquería, remains a persistent force in the cultural history of the Andes.

_\*Supported by the Arts Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt and the Kloster Bergesche Foundation (Working Grant 2023/2024)._

Huaqueo 

SOUVENIR | Ise 2023 – 2024

SOUVENIR | Basel 2023 – 2024

SOUVENIR | Halle 2023 – 2024

**King of Chess:** Tufting (wall tapestry), 80 × 80 cm, red wool approx. 200 cm long, palm roof (dimensions variable), wooden bench 60 × 43 × 30 cm | **Queen of Chess:** Tufting (wall tapestry), 80 × 80 cm, red wool approx. 200 cm long, palm roof (dimensions variable), wooden bench 60 × 43 × 30 cm | **Chessboard:** Wood, sea salt, and coal, 260 × 200 × 5 cm.

The multi-part spatial installation Ranchería is the result of my travels through La Guajira, Colombia. The work reflects on the exploitation of natural resources in the region by using the game of chess as an allegory for colonial dependencies. The chessboard squares are filled with coal and sea salt—symbols of the area’s primary extracted resources. Through the contrast of materials and symbolic elements, the installation stages a confrontation between power, territory, and resistance.

\*This project was supported by the Graduate Scholarship of the State of Saxony-Anhalt and the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, Halle.

Ranchería 2021 – 2022

Composed of 30 sandblasted glass panels depicting an empty chair and accompanied by a video of a cacerolazo protest, Der leere Stuhl reflects on personal time in relation to political failure. Each chair represents one year of the artist’s life, symbolically confronting the notion of the failed state with lived experience. The work creates a space for catharsis, reflection, and dialogue, addressing memory, absence, and the search for alternative futures.

\*Supported by the Alexander Tutsek Foundation.

Der leere Stuhl (The Empty Chair) and Cacerolazo 2020 – 2021

Común: Sugar as a weapon of domination

Común in Spanish means common, customary, or usual. The story behind a single “grain of sugar” brings together a chain of themes such as migration, colonization, slavery, land-use rights, as well as contemporary economic, political, and socio-cultural conflicts worldwide. In the spatial installation, sugar is used as a metaphor, positioning itself through the symbolic power of the machete and becoming an object through the transformation of materiality. In this way, Común sheds light on the historical and present-day conditions of the global sugar industry. Part of the work is the newspaper Común, which aims to diversify and expand prevailing views on sugar.

Común

Memory Pills: On the armed conflict in Colombia

The armed conflict in Colombia has lasted for more than 50 years. These Memory Pills are a response to so many years of pain and death caused by war— especially for the victims, who are not only the result of the conflict but also evidence of the blatant indifference and silence on the part of the state apparatus.

Gedächtnispillen (Memory Pills)

The Wayuu are dying of thirst

El Cerrejón is the largest open-pit coal mine in the world, with a total area of 69,000 hectares. Its current owners, each with one third, are: Anglo American, BHP Billiton, and Glencore plc.

The Ranchería River is the main water source of La Guajira; it supplies 250,000 people with water. In the coming years, the river is to be diverted along a length of 26 km, because it flows through the mining area.

Colombia is an important coal supplier for German coal-fired power plants.

na wayuukana outushii sutuma miasü

As a foreigner, one is constantly confronted with questions of cultural identity and origin. This experience is shaped in particular by bureaucratic processes of repetition and the renewal of validity of official documents.

Un–gültig attempts to reproduce as accurately as possible a page from my old passport, exposing the fragility of identity as something regulated, stamped, and repeatedly rendered invalid.

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