Nicolás Consuegra

Born in 1976 in Bogotá, Colombia
Lives and works in Bogotá

I am motivated to find different ways of working, depending on the areas of research—which are closely linked to the concepts I am approaching. While there are visible formal differences in my work, overall I’m interested in finding historical and contextual motives that answer the questions I continually formulate concerning the space where my works will be created/shown and how the public can approach them.

Consequently, I always research the space I will be exhibiting in so as to incorporate regional/contextual influences into my projects. It is through years of my practice that I have found the line between what we regard as “local” and what we consider “universal” to be ambiguous. In Colombia, for example, we are exposed to an overflow of foreign information through media—mostly American—that complicates the distinction between  “authentic” and “foreign” cultural signs. This confusion, in turn, sparks the drive to “devour,” and incorporate, foreign culture that recalls the Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 definition of antropofagia*. I am interested in the questions that circulate around cultural production and in finding a useful approach to comprehending its mutations and complex, multicultural evolution, instead of looking for, or assuming, an uncontaminated origin.

* Anthropophagy adopts the trope of cannibalism to its own use, and with a twist: the need for an intentional “digestion” of foreign stereotypes to produce a possible model for national identity.

Exhibitions
2013 –  Elementos para una unidad colectiva –  Galería LA CENTRAL –  Bogotá
2010 – Pasado Tiempo Futuro –  Galería Nueveochenta –  Bogotá
2008 – Instituto de visión –  Galería Nueveochenta –  Bogotá
2004 – Superficial –  Galería Jenny Vilà – Cali
2003 –  En algunos vacíos. Site-specific project – Museo Nacional de Colombia – Bogotá
2003 –  Paréntesis. Site-specific project – Alliance Français – Bogotá
2002 – Traslaciones –  Galería Valenzuela y Klenner –  Bogotá

Group Exhibitions
2014 –WATERWEAVERS: The River in Contemporary Colombian Visual and Material Culture – Bard Graduate Center, New York
2013 – Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear – Lugar a Dudas. Cali
2013 – 43 Salón (inter) Nacional de Artistas – Colombia, Medellín
2012 – When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitude – CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
2012 – Imaginary Homelands – Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Toronto