In 2009, the journalist Iván Ordoñez interviewed the artist and critic Humberto Junca; this is the record of that interview, which appeared in Privado. Entrevistas con artistas [Private: Interviews with Artists], a website that publishes interviews with contemporary Colombian artists. Junca explains that he wishes to be regarded as a social entity rather than as an artist. He addresses the audience to describe his work in terms of universal experiences, such as childhood, adolescence, etc. He also explains how his cultural environment and his fondness for music sparked his interest in what people consider “dirty” or “broken,” which in turn influences his choice of objects and how he uses and transforms them through repetitive acts in his work. All of the above are involved in Junca’s concept of “the feminine” and “bricolage,” whose theoretical construction he bases on the works of authors, such as the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the writer Georges Bataille, and the Americans Rosalind Krauss and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. Junca also acknowledges the work of Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp.

This document is relevant because it addresses topics that are essential to any research and interpretation of the work of Humberto Junca (b. 1968), as well as ideological issues that interest him, such as how his work relates to social circumstances that are outside the field of art, and how the movies and music have influenced his creations. The interview also explains how Junca understands “the feminine” and how he relates to this idea in his work and in his position vis-à-vis Colombian art. Junca also discusses fundamental elements of his creative process, such as horizontal, levelled, or feminine qualities, bricolage, music, the cinema, the city, and the neighborhood in which he lives, among other things.  

Humberto Junca studied fine art at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. In 2000 he was awarded first prize at the IX Salón Regional de Artistas [Ninth Regional Artists Salon] in Bogotá. At a later date, his exhibition Desecho [Waste] (2002) was the winner of the Cuarto Ciclo [Fourth Cycle] in the program Jóvenes Artistas de la Alianza Colombo-Francesa [Young Artists of the Colombian-French Alliance] (Bogotá, 2003), the same year in which he received a special mention at the Primera Bienal de Gráfica Alternativa [First Alternative Graphics Biennial] at the ASAB (Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá) [Superior Academy of Arts in Bogotá]. He is a critic and curator, and has held teaching positions at important art organizations in Bogotá. He is a founding member of the musical group Las Malas Amistades, with which he performed at the Festival de Performance [Performance Festival] in Cali.

To access other documents that refer to this event, see [doc. no. 1099696 and doc. no. 1102579]. One of his albums was released by the English label Honest Jon’s and by the Psych-o-path label in the United States. To access Junca’s work as a critic, see [doc. no. 1100916], to see his interview [doc. no. 1131354] and for theoretical documentation on his work [doc. no. 1099366].