Colombian students relate to photography exhibit
CU students are learning more about life in Colombia after visiting a photography exhibit detailing civilian life among paramilitary forces in the country.
“The Displaced” exhibit illustrates the innocent civilians of Colombia who have been forced from their homes by the paramilitary, guerillas, and other security forces.
Kory Katsimpalis, manager of the UMC Art Gallery, said the show was put together by Professor George Rivera of CU’s department of art and art history.
“[Rivera] asked if we could show the exhibit in our gallery space, and it just so happened that we had an opening that we were looking to fill,” Katsimpalis said.
Katsimpalis said the photos were taken by a group of photographers assembled by Rivera and a colleague.
“George Rivera has collaborated relationships with some people teaching and working in Colombia, and this project came out of those collaborations,” Katsimpalis said.
The black and white pictures are grouped in order on the walls. The first group of photos is of homes with clothes hanging out to dry. The serious face of a Colombian woman stares back from the wall in the lighted room.
“There is an eerie type of emotion,” said Kellen Foster, a 22-year-old senior management major.
Other photos include smiling faces of Colombian children. A boy plays with a piece of metal in a stream. Small children play in rubber tires three times their size. The photos reflect the simple pleasures of childhood, though that childhood is spent in a warring country.
On the wall a description from Rivera reads: “According to Amnesty International, more than 3,000,000 people in Colombia have been forced from their homes by the army – backed paramilitaries, the guerillas, and security forces. Tens of thousands of others have been killed, tortured, kidnapped or ‘disappeared.'”
Rivera was unable to be reached for comment regarding the exhibit.
Civilians are displaced from their homes usually because they live on fertile land in which cocaine can be planted. Revolutionary groups often need this cocaine for their drug trade, said Sebastian Montealegre, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in architecture.
Montealegre moved from Colombia about three and a half years ago.
“I lived in the city, not the main city, Neiva,” Montealegre said. “Everyday we’d hear helicopters and mobilizing troops. It was an everyday thing. Near my home there were terrorist attacks nearby. You get used to it. Got to get used [to it]. Helps you build some character.”
Camilo Muñoz, 22, lived in Colombia for nearly 20 years.
“My whole life I lived in the city Medellin, the second largest city that had the highest murder rate,” Muñoz said.
He shared an experience of his life in Colombia.
“You will see dead people at any time at any place at your own school,” he recalled. “I remember once when it was my last year of high school. We used to get out at 12 p.m. I heard gun shots and fell to the floor, and when I heard the motorcycles take off and looked at the window, I saw one of my friends was bleeding from his arm. And I went out to the street there was a kid who I used to see everyday at class and saw he had been shot at point blank at his eye and [the bullet] had come out from behind his head and same bullet hit the other guy in the arm. That would happen every week. An everyday thing.”
Another description on the wall reads: “Colombia has been as well on top of the list of happiest countries of the world. Its people have a profound capacity to celebrate and share, to overcome obstacles, progress together and ‘create.'”
The exhibit will run Feb. 25 through March 21.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Emily Burrows-Poretsky at emily.burrows-poretsky@colorado.edu.
