'Traces of Disappearance', the exhibition that relives events such as the dispossession of land and the seizure of the Palace of Justice

The exhibition, consisting of three moments, including the displacement of the Nukak people, will be at the Miguel Urrutia Art Museum in Bogotá until June 22, 2022

The Miguel Urrutia Banco de la República Art Museum will be the setting for the country to learn, from an artistic perspective, some of the events that marked the history of the armed conflict and which entities such as the Truth Commission were responsible for collecting, organizing and displaying them.

'Traces of Disappearance' is the name given to this exhibition, led not only by the entity that is part of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition, but was made in conjunction with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based in Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Bank of the Republic, generating as a result a technological sample that compiles research done since 2018.

Specific cases of violations of human and environmental rights will be shown in this gallery, which was carried out with technological resources to provide interactivity and greater understanding of the events that occurred at different times in Colombia's recent history and that generate, in the spectator, an exercise in reflection on the magnitude of the same ones.

The disappearance, violence and forced displacement of the Nukak people in Guaviare, the dispossession of land in Urabá and a case of disappearance in the capture of the Palace of Justice, are the three moments that make up the exhibition; each with a different name and a 3D recreation led by Forensic Architecture.

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In detail: the three moments that make up the exhibition

'The Black Boxes of Enforced Disappearance' is based on an investigation by the Truth Commission into enforced disappearance in the case of the Palace of Justice, showing that not only the people there were violated, but the very evidence that remained after the event.

The investigative tasks resulted in three videos, physical and digital architectural models, documentation and maps detailing the enforced disappearance of November 6, 1985.

'The detected jungle' is a mural that shows the devastation suffered by the Nukak indigenous people and their territory following the murders of their members and the dispossession of their lands. Due to the pandemic, the research team was unable to do ethnographic work on the territory, but this was not an impediment to building its space based on the collection of existing data on this community, including the environmental damage generated by the war itself and the displacement of the inhabitants.

Now, for the construction of 'Dispossession and Memory of the Earth', both the Truth Commission and Forensic Architecture recreated in 3D a 100-square-kilometer landscape of the area known as Nueva Colonia in Urabá Antioquia. This project was carried out in conjunction with peasants whose land has been illegally occupied for banana cultivation. Likewise, a bibliographic analysis was carried out with texts dating back to 1955 and showing how dispossession has historically been carried out through banking transactions.

The latter sample shows that the expropriation of land from farmers is an institutional practice that occurs as a result of environmental and physical violence.

This exhibition will be open to the public until June 18, 2022 at the MAMU (Miguel Urrutia Art Museum), and additionally, in order to have a broader context of the scourges shown in 'Traces of Disappearance', the Truth Commission has on its YouTube channel an analysis on 'Dispossession and memory of the earth', detailing the horror of the massacres that were carried out for the dispossession of the land in Urabá.

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