The text “‘Biogenesis’ (…)” by critic Carolina Ponce de León was featured in the catalogue to the exhibition BIO*. *As in ‘Biography’, ‘Biology’, ‘Biogenesis,’ held at the Colombian Center in New York (1996). In it, Ponce de León, who curated the exhibition, places the work of artist Ana Claudia Múnera in context. She discusses Múnera’s artistic reflection on her own position as a woman and on the family, and the artist’s close tie to the daily life of the city where she lives. De León goes on to discuss the ideas underlying the specific works on exhibit: the video sculpture Máquina [Machine] (1996)based on images from Múnera’s childhood and on her relationship to her mother and to the sewing machine as object; the video projection Alma de quimera [Chimera Soul] (1996), created using recordings taken on public buses in Medellín. Ponce de León is particularly interested in the graffiti and knife cuts that passengers make on the seats of the buses which, the author claims, form a sort of memory of life experiences. The bus drivers themselves are the ones that later stitch up the seats.

This text addresses the artistic production of Ana Claudia Múnera (b. 1966) who, starting in the eighties, began doing important work in the video medium. She has experimented with moving images both on monitors and beyond them, constructing the video sculptures and video installations fundamental to her body of work. 

Múnera has addressed issues closely tied to her life and her experiences, as well as the contexts in which they take place. Her video installations include Vestido de novia [Wedding Dress] (1997), presented at the VI Havana Biennial (Cuba); Ronda [Round] (1997) presented at the XXXVII Salón Nacional de Artistas; the video Escala uno a uno [Full Scale] (2000); and the performance A la rueda rueda (2007) produced for the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín, Prácticas Artísticas Contemporáneas MDE 07. 

The Colombian Center is a venue geared to disseminating Colombian culture in New York. It housed the exhibition BIO*. *As in ‘Biography’, ‘Biology’, ‘Biogenesis’ which featured—in addition to Múmera’s work—sculptures by Pablo Wang Wong (b. 1957) and photographs by Alejandro Castaño (b. 1961), both of whom are Colombian as well. 

Ana Claudia Múnera received a degree in art from the Universidad Nacional of Colombia (Medellín campus) in 1990, in education from the Universidad del Bosque in Bogotá in 2000, and in multimedia design from the Universidad Nacional of Colombia (Medellín campus). Starting in 1999 and into the present (2010), she has been a professor at the School of Art of the Universidad Nacional of Colombia (Medellín campus). She participated in the VI Havana Biennial (Cuba, 1997), the II Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, 1999), as well as a number of editions of regional and national art salons. 

Colombian historian, art critic, and curator Carolina Ponce de León (b. 1957) is the author of El Efecto Mariposa Ensayos 1985-2000. In 1992, she was one of the curators of Ante América, an exhibition held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá. She was awarded a fellowship from the Ministerio de Cultura to carry out the research project entitled Crítica y Arte en Colombia 1974-2004. At present (2010), she is the director of Galería La Raza in San Francisco, California.