The work of Juan Manuel Echavarría has focused entirely on violence, but never on blood, on bodies. His gaze is oblique, his work metaphorical. To describe it he refers to the myth of Perseus, the demigod in charge of decapitating the monstrous Medusa, who he turned into stone those who stared into her eyes. To avoid being petrified, Perseus uses a mirror on her shield, so he can see her without looking at her and avoid being petrified.
Juan Manuel Echavarría does the same thing: he exposes the violence in perspective to avoid paralyzing those who come to look. His work seeks just the opposite: to raise awareness among the public, to open spaces for emotion and reflection.
That’s what When Death Started Walking Here… is about, the anthological exhibition about the work of Juan Manuel and his team—Fernando Grisales, Emanuel Márquez, Juan Carlos Arias and all the people who have been protagonists in Bojayá, Puerto Berrío, Caquetá, Montes de María, victims and ex-combatants—which opened the University Museum of the University of Antioquia, as part of the celebration of the 220 years of the Alma Mater and in recognition of the work of Juan Manuel and the courage of those who have worked with the. It is an invitation to continue reflecting on violence at the hands of those who have suffered it.
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How was your transition from writing to photography?
“On the threshold of my 50 years I understood that the written word was telling me in my ear to leave it still, to move away and I listened to it. And when I left the word I felt on an existential precipice.”
And then…
“I say to a couple of my friends, Ana Tiscornia and Liliana Porter: ‘What do I do? I can’t be a banker, I can’t be a merchant, I can’t be a professor, I can’t be an astronomer.’ And they, knowing my artistic sensitivity, gave me a camera and threw me into the abyss.”
What was the first thing you did with that camera?
“I went to July 20, in Bogotá, to photograph what I found and I found one warehouse after another and the mannequins displaying clothes on the street, on the sidewalks and I began to observe how the pedestrians passed between the mannequins and the People touched the clothes, saw the price and no one looked, observed those tears that the mannequins had. Then I said, this is me too, that I have not wanted to observe, or think, or reflect on the violence in my country.”
Until that moment, how had you related to that violence?
“Nothing, I had normalized it too, and also in my literature I never thought that I should go and touch reality, although from that shipwreck I brought a passion for metaphor.”
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The metaphor made sense there with the issue of violence…
“Total. I understood that violence had to be shown through metaphors, so that it was not a direct look. Showing the bleeding, broken and dismembered body is, for me, sensationalism.”
What did it start with?
“Vase cut. Compositions of flowers with bones. I went to that first memory of the violence in my country. And what I felt, what I remembered, were the cuts. Flannel cutting and tie cutting, above all.”
From there, how did your work develop?
“First my work began in the studio, because I thought that an artist had to work in his studio. I made Cut of the Vase, Bolívar’s Tray, some photographs about the kidnapping of María… until 2003 when I made Bocas de Ceniza, and left my studio. That is the project that changes the way I work. There I decided to investigate the violence by going out to places, to meet people who have experienced it firsthand.”
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What changed?
“I wasn’t listening. I did my work in my studio, but I listened to myself. There I begin to listen to the other, to learn from the other, to be interested in the other. In Bocas de Ceniza I am simply a means for others to express their tragedy and there is not a single word of hate or revenge. That is the enormous beauty of those songs.”
Why is it important to listen?
“I believe that in them there is an enormous need to talk, to tell what has happened to them. And in me, I felt that the pores were opening and like a sponge I was absorbing these stories and becoming sensitive to them, becoming aware.”
It changed his life…
“Completely. And my way of working. After Bocas de Ceniza I did not work in my studio again.”
But working like this ends up generating very intimate relationships with people…
“It’s a work ethic. I like to work with people, get to know them, and not just go, film them and leave. When I work with ex-combatants, for example, in that project The War We Haven’t Seen, some of them became very close because a relationship of affection and gratitude developed. They have opened an enormous sensitivity to me.”
Tell me about that project, The War We Haven’t Seen…
“When I did that La María project, I asked one of them, Melisa, if she felt scared about life, that they were going to kill her. And she told me, ‘not Don Manuel, because some of those who took care of us, in quotes, from the guerrillas, were my children’s age.’ And there at that moment I said, I have to listen to stories from the other shore, from the so-called perpetrator. That’s where the idea was born.”
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What was the project about?
“The war that we have not seen was workshops with combatants from different groups and lasted two years.”
What were those workshops like?
“One gave them brushes, gave them colors and told them: ‘If you want, paint what you want.’ They were voluntary workshops. And little by little they opened up and painted stories about the war. As they were volunteers, some combatants left and others took up the brush and the workshops. But to achieve that, trust had to be built.
When I asked them if they would allow me to record their stories, what was in the painting, I always asked them what they had felt when they painted. And 99% told me that they felt relief, because they told something that they had not been able to tell before.”
How has your understanding of violence changed?
“We think that it is black and white, that they are good and bad, but I have realized over time that there are many people, especially ex-combatants who entered at a very early age, at 8, 12, 14 years, and for me they are first victims and then someone teaches them to kill and they become victimizers. That line that separates the victim from the perpetrator is very thin, very thin.
And the other thing that I understood is that, if I had been born in those towns or in those hamlets where the FARC were the authorities for 30 or more years, if I had been born there and had not had the opportunities that life offered me, perhaps my life had been that of weapons too.”
How to talk to people who have not experienced this violence?
“Precisely an exhibition at a university raises awareness among young people. Today, compared to 15 years ago, 20 years ago, there is much more awareness of the horrors of war. The JEP, the Truth Commission, all of this has been extraordinary progress that has happened to us. How about lieutenants, soldiers, colonels saying I’m a murderer regarding false positives? That is extraordinary, that curtain that hid so many horrors, that hid so many truths is opening, we are tearing it apart, fortunately.”
What meaning does this exhibition have for you and your work team?
“It is a great honor to be able to participate in the celebration of the 220 years of the University of Antioquia. And it is the broadest, most forceful, largest exhibition we have done so far.”
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What are you working on now?
“I have been writing travel diaries for about 15 years and we are working on them and revisiting them because there is written a memory of what those roads and those encounters with people have been like.”
You never stopped writing, but you changed your way of writing…
“It was to write so as not to forget, because if I don’t write that about Bojayá, about how we landed on the main street, how Noel and Vicente were waiting for us, how Domingo’s wife had that banquet for us, how Domingo took us to the cemetery, yes “I don’t write that, that is diluted, that is forgotten.”
How do you feel that violence has changed? How would you say we are now?
“We are still the same”.
It seems impossible to get out of there…
“As long as there is drug trafficking and so many different groups, total peace is very difficult.”
2023-10-15 03:59:46
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