Luis Ortiz | Desde las Montañas de Colombia (From the Mountains of Colombia)

In Colombia, the mountains symbolize the struggles for autonomy and resistance of different marginalized groups; they have been places of refuge for ethnic minorities and impoverished peoples who have often been dispossessed of better lands. The inhabitants of the mountain regions follow a relational-ontological understanding of place that views humans and nature as bonded in a sustainable interdependency. Since the signing of the peace agreement between the FARC and the Colombian government in late 2016, the violence against local social organizations has increased. Conflicts over the opening of new territories for neo-extractivist projects and the ongoing territorial disputes are some of the leading causes of the increasing violence. This project engages with the possibilities of re-relating (relating differently, i.e., non-extractive) with the mountains of Colombia, the people, and their spirituality. From a position of in-betweenness as a Colombian migrant in Germany, I follow the material and affective scopes of the mountains in a cosmopolitan context determined by the violence of dispossession and deterritorialization.

Luis Ortiz is an artist and activist originally from Colombia living in Germany since his teens. In his work, he addresses thematics of migration, decolonization, capitalist regimes and healing/surviving. Working often as part of collectives, he is at the moment a member of the political collective Kolumbienkampagne Berlin.