A window to Colombia

Colombian Natural Jewelry

amano is a venture that gathers over 500 artisans from all over Colombia to share their knowledge and develop new techniques. The final result of this process is the manufacture of unique pieces of true artistic value.

This space is open for the promotion of emerging artists from Colombia.

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Featured Artist: Mauricio Rivera R.

Statement:

As Chief Editor of the Outsider's Guide to Melbourne, it's my pleasure to inaugurate this digital window to Colombia. The aim of this space is to show a glimpse of a distant tropical land, which has remained an endless source of inspiration for thousands of years.

images from San Agustín archeological park in the south of Colombia

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Journalistic work in Colombia

"Artisanal journey accross Colombia"

At the beginning of 2009, I travelled around Colombia to interview some of the artisans who work with aMano (to see the animation with the complete stories click here)

Jorge Henao - workshop in San Bernardo del Viento

Jorge Henao's Workshop is located a few kilometers away from San Bernardo del Viento, a small village in the Caribbean Coast, close to the border with Panama. When he was 16, Jorge left his hometown of Medellín and started traveling around Colombia. 'When I finished High School, seeing that I had no choice to go to university, I decided to walk the country. But not as a crazy wanderer; I always identified myself as an artisan in the streets.'..."

César Salas - workshop in Iza

"César left his house as a teenager and started travelling around Colombia, working as an artisan. That's when he met Jorge, selling crafts in the beaches of Santa Marta 30 years ago. During his youth, César admits being a 'hippie, herb-smoker nadaísta*', but above all, he has allways identified himself as an artisan. In the four decades he has been working as an artisan..."

(*Nadaismo is an artistic movement that emerged in Colombia during the 1970s. Nada means nothing in Spanish)

Anayibe Rincón - workshop in Iza

"Anayibe comes from a family of artisans. As a small girl she used to help her mother knitting ruanas, in a house they had in Duitama (a town close to Iza). Her workshop started operating in 2007, when a group of Italian fashion designers travelled to Iza; to teach a group of 60 women -heads of family from the region- different techniques to work with cloth. Of the original group of 60 women who made part of that course, only 15 still work with Anayibe. Some have resigned because their partners do not like them working full time at the workshop, “They even come here to argue with me, they tell me that if their women like being here so much, then that I should let them live here as well”, tells Anayibe..."

Alejandra Vivas and her brothers - workshops in Bogotá

The workshops of Alejandra Vivas and her brothers are located in Ciudad Bolivar, a borough of Bogotá with one of the highest rates of poverty and violence. To access Alejandra’s neighbourhood (el Barrio Bella Flor) one most climb a stairway of 245 steps, which stands around hundreds of small houses made of recycled materials; over one of Bogotá's eastern hills. Alejandra arrived to this neighbourhood seven years ago. She came as a displaced from the conflict, 'I was working in a farm next to Frías (in the state of Tolima) and the guerrilla came to the town. Because of this, the army came shortly afterward and started threatening us. One of them even hit me. They told us that on the following week the paramilitary were going to come and they were going to kill us..."

Marco Clavijo - workshop in Bogotá

"Before being an artisan, Marco worked as a nurse, 'with very short hair and nails always short and clean.' After that, he started studying anthropology in the National University of Colombia. During this time, Marco started working as an artisan in order to cover his daily expenses. 'I had classes in the morning,. In the afternoon I used to stand in front of the Javeriana University to sell my crafts. With what I earned, I used to pay the buses, my lunches at the uni and the photocopies; I even had some for going out Friday nights. When I came home at night I had time to read for the next day’s class..."

Marcelo - workshop in Bogotá

"Marcelo’s has his workshop in the neighbourhood of Santa Librada, where he has lived most of his life. It employs over 15 women, all heads of family from the neighbourhood. His real name is Óscar Orlando Gómez. Marcelo is just the name the kids from the neighbourhood used to call him."

Jesús Narváez - workshop in Bogotá

"Jesús was born in Pasto, a city in the south of Colombia. When he was 16, he forged his ID and enlisted in the army. After his training course, he was sent to Santa Marta, in the Caribbean coast. It was the 1970s, a time where 'heaps of drugs' used to run through this city. “I used to earn the minimum wage, which at that time was around 40 thousand pesos a month, but we could go out and earn 50 or 60 thousand in just one night”, he remembers. One day, Jesús left the barracks and ran into a girlfriend, with whom he went on a night out. Because of this, he missed the exit to a 3-day training he had on the following morning. As punishment, he was locked in a cell, during a weekend in which his parents went to visit him. After this, he deserted from the army, for which he was convicted to do forced labour for nine months, in an army base in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. After leaving the army, Jesús went back to Pasto, where he fell in love and got married..."

Patricia Estáiza & Víctor Polanía - workshop in Neiva

"The workshop of Patricia Estaiza and Víctor Polanía is located in the city of Neiva, in the neighbourhood 'El Triangulo', which stands in the shore of the Magdalena River. This river is born in the southern highlands of Colombia (some 200 Km south of Neiva) and flows northerly until reaching the Caribbean Sea, near the city of Barranquilla. Víctor and Patricia met nine years ago in the streets of Neiva, where Patricia used to work as a vendor. She had recently arrived from Popayán with her daughter, after divorcing her former husband. Víctor had just come out of jail, after serving a sentence of 5 years for rebellion. 'We were collecting a tax in a town nearby, when the mobile brigade of the army fell on us. Two of my companions were killed in combat, I was lucky to end up alive...”

Patricia Montezuma - workshop in Sandoná

"Patricia has a workshop in Sandoná that works exclusively with the Iraca palm. They knit hats and decorative accessories using this material. She started as an artisan when she was a small girl; she learned from her mother, who used to have a small workshop in her house, where Patricia and her 4 brothers used to work 'she taught us craftmanship as a way of surviving, my mother doesn't have a father and didn't have a husband either, so we all had to work to pull us through..."

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mr2images

Rather than being the product of a preconceived process, these images are the result of an exploration through thousand of old and new photographs; in a quest for shapes and characters hidden in dark corners between the memory and the subconscious.

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See the full catalogue visiting my profile (click here); or in my blog mr2images.blogspot.com

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Journalistic Work in Australia

Since my arrival to Australia at the beginning of 2007, I have been working as a freelance journalist. My main work in this country has been the story of the Gatwick Private Hotel in St Kilda.

The following are samples of this work, which are all published in the Outsider's Guide.

-Preview from the "Sonnets from the Gatwick"-

"It was room 225, the first room I ever saw at the Gatwick. On that occasion -almost a year ago- it was a complete mess. It had food crumbles on the floor and empty syringe wrappers over the desks and in the cupboard’s drawers. On one of the walls, written on black magic marker, there was a sign that read ‘Babydoll.’ During the following months, I witnessed the recovery of the room. Builders went to repaint the walls and change the carpet and the lamp that hangs on the ceiling. But now, the room was once again in a chaos. Somebody had broken one of the windows from outside, so I helped Ettie replace the frame. When this was done, I went to my room."

-Fragment from "Six Nights by the Sea" (click here to download the full story in pdf)

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