This is the first chapter of the book Festival de Performance de Cali-Colombia [Cali-Colombia Performance Festival] (2006) published by Helena Producciones, the group that was started in 1998 and currently includes the Colombian artists Wilson Díaz, Ana María Millán, Andrés Sandoval, Claudia Patricia Sarria, Juan David Medina, and Leonardo Herrera. In this chapter, Díaz discusses the nature of the group and describes it as an association devoted to independent research that, based on the study of cultural productions and their relationships with historical, artistic, social, political, and economic contexts, has created many curatorial projects, television programs, publications, exhibitions, and workshops that have documented much of Colombia’s art production from 1998 until the present day. The description of activities carried out by Helena Producciones in parallel with the Festival de Performance de Cali reveals the basic ideas that underpin the group’s eclectic nature. It is unquestionably one of the major promoters of contemporary Colombian art.  

The Colombian artist and curator Wilson Díaz Polanco (b. 1963) describes conditions in Cali in the late 1990s when social injustice was rampant due to the economic crash that followed the fall of the Cali Cartel in 1995. At that time, the Helena Producciones group came together in response to the local art community’s sense of failure and frustration in the face of the bonanza created by drug trafficking. These circumstances inspired the group to develop curatorial projects of a political nature designed to draw attention to how the boom in illicit drug profits could impact certain facets of cultural identity among the residents of Cali. At an artistic level, those concerns are reflected in the constant curatorial search for regional creative models such as the many showings of movies made by the cinematographic avant-garde in Cali in the 1960s and the exhibition of works by regional artists from the 1970s and 1980s such as Oscar Muñoz (b. 1951), Fernell Franco (b. 1942), and Pedro Alcántara (b. 1942). Díaz underscores the importance of the many projects undertaken by Helena Producciones since 1998—when it functioned as a parallel historical resource alongside the Festival de Performance de Cali—that were crucial milestones in the group’s creation and subsequent activities. Those events show how Helena Producciones operated during the last eleven years, and help to explain the group’s versatility and multi-media quality.  

It is important to understand that the group was created as a cultural alternative after seven fundraising events organized from 1998 through 2001 in an attempt to bring culture back to the Cali middle class that had been displaced by the drug hierarchy’s nouveau riche in recent years. Among the curatorial projects involved were: Terror y Escape [Terror and Escape] (1999), F/X o Efectos Especiales [F/X or Special Effects] and Función [Function] (2001), XI Salón Regional- Región Pacífico [11th Regional Salon – Pacific Region] (2005), and the television program LOOP (2001-2004). All these activities testify to the group’s goal of promoting and documenting Colombian art through a variety of official and alternative platforms in order to expose it to a broader, less restricted audience.   

Wilson Diaz is a Colombian artist and curator who lives in Cali. He won the First Prize at the Salón Nacional de Artistas [National Artists Salon] in 1998, and curated the VIII Salón Nacional de Arte Joven [8th National Salon for Young Artists] at the La Galería Santa Fé in Bogotá. He was a professor of Visual Arts from 1996 through 2003 at the Universidad del Valle, the Conservatorio de Bellas Artes in Cali, and the Universidad del Cauca (Popayán).