Muralismo como encargo participativo: Holografía de lo (in)visible en comunidades a’i cofán de la selva colombiana

ABSTRACT

When mural art in indigenous communities is commissioned as a participatory project, several methodological, epistemological, and aesthetic questions arise. This text proposes a horizontal and investigative approach to what we can simply call ‘muralism in the A'i Cofán community context,’ not as significant works executed in communities, but as collective events that emerge from unique and complex fieldwork that exceeds the artist's individuality. The wall ceases to be a passive frame and becomes a true threshold of understanding, laden with questions, affections, and an ‘aura’ that participates in the transition from the invisible to the visible and vice versa, a hologram and an echo (perhaps distant, mysterious, intimate?) of the cosmogony of the A'i Cofán people. Beyond the meanings and visions that yagé offers as heritage, pigment and guiding principle of this art form, we want to highlight the backdrop of a community life that is constantly suspended in the face of the chaos and violence of an ecological and social world in progressive disintegration, as well as the importance of pictorial art as a new form of positioning in the ñutshe i'hamba , the good thinking for living well of this people of the Colombian jungle.