Here Fernando Escobar develops the proposal for his art project De memoria. Nueva fauna y flora. Escobar concretely renders visible the conceptual sphere from which he derives his “participative, collective” research, as he categorizes it, performed in specific contexts in different Colombian cities: Bogotá, Tunja, Medellín, San Andrés, and Leticia. (The performance piece was also held in Paris.) The text presents the description, the objectives, and the justification of an art practice that involves the members of different communities as co-creators of culture. Concepts such as “culture,”“visual memory,”“urban imaginings,”“archives of experience,”and “movement” serve as the theoretical framework used by Escobar to traverse and observe the spaces that are the subject of his proposal. Limits and points of encounter between memory, tradition, and history are the focal points that are conducive to dialogue and the discovery of the nexus among different milieus. The writer also informs us that the result of the project (whether visual, written or audio) allows the construction of a story made up of urban fragments; in other words, the fauna and flora that arise from what has been called “popular culture,” a complex term that Escobar studies with care.

Fernando Escobar Neira (b. 1973) is one of the Colombian artists distinguished by his creation of art projects that subvert the status of the official visual culture and call into question the origin of art discourse and the institutionalization of art. Moreover, his concentration on the field of visual and cultural studies becomes evident in the nature of his art practice, in which the visual products of the popular culture (or culture categorized as popular) acquire a specific interest.

Alongside Escobar’s work, we may place other local approaches that have similar characteristics. Such is the case of Echando lápiz, a project led by Manuel Santana (b. 1960) [see doc. no. 1099411] or the work of the Colectivo Populardelujo, made up of Juan Esteban Duque (b. 1974), Roxana Martínez (b. 1974), and Esteban Ucrós (b. 1979). Both ideas were developed at the margins of institutional art.