The first turn of the spiral

Camila Rodríguez Triana

“Trades are a possibility to connect us with the cosmos; they allow us to transcend into eternity. Weaving means weaving life, weaving the universe; pottery is molding the worlds, molding destiny; goldsmithing is ascending, becoming spiritual, being light; working with wood and stone is remembering the memory of the cosmos...”

Grandmother Princess Mhuysqa

For Camila Rodríguez Triana, the conscious ascent of the spiral—the labyrinth in which one gets lost and finds oneself multiple times throughout life—started in the remoteness of France in 2017. There, faced with the blooming of a profound feeling of alienation in a context so different from her hometown of Cali, the artist began a process of questioning and healing that, years later, would lead her to inquire insistently and attentively about her Origin: her body and the territory inhabited by her ancestors, the Mhuysqas.

Thus, Camila Rodríguez Triana’s first solo exhibition in Colombia is the result of months of theoretical and ethnographic research, a pilgrimage of more than a year to the sacred lagoons that comprise the Mhuysqa territory, and everything that happens on the physical and spiritual planes when she dedicates herself to investigate with dedication and intensity her identity and the lineage that precedes her. It is also a first approach to just one aspect of the complex and profound Mhuysqa cosmogony: the feminine and masculine energies and their indissoluble bond. Rodríguez Triana proposes to remember—supported by the study of Mhuysqa myths—those ancestral thoughts focused on the balance and complementarity of these energies that prevailed before the arrival of the Spanish invaders who chose to separate them, given that their understanding and integration propitiate the harmonious journey of the human being within the original principles of the greater law.

For the artist, the act of remembering is an action that involves the connection of the body, mind (consciousness), and heart, which enables the creation of an identity. Therefore, through her work, she proposes “to make memory with feet and with hands. With feet when walking the territory and with hands when working again the ancestral trades.”

The Mhuysqas venerate the territory because it is not merely the “reflection of the celestial geography”: in it lies the law of Origin. To know and understand it, it is necessary to walk it. In the words of the artist: “When walking the territory, all the senses are put into dialogue: images, gestures, feelings, flavors, sounds. As I walk the territory, I walk through time and history, and I also walk my own body.” Even the union of the feminine-masculine energies is manifested in the territory, specifically in the seven lagoons or wombs waiting to be touched by the seed of the sun to enable life on earth. These wombs or containers of life were visited by the artist and then translated by her hands into three-dimensional works, in many cases painted by natural elements and whose contrasting materials converse harmoniously: weaving made with fique and copper wire; book pages painted with earth and embroidered with cotton threads; fique embroidered on wood; clay, metal, and stone slabs; limestone and copper.

The idea of dialogue—present at a material and conceptual level in the works included in the exhibition—becomes more complex as we look at this proposal through the eyes of miscegenation, as Camila Rodríguez Triana speaks to us of the importance of embracing her Indigenous ancestry and reconciling it with the European ancestry to build her identity and change her destiny. Thus, these works not only embody this idea of intertwining but also serve to move those imperceptible threads that make up the subtle fields where the healing not only of the artist but also of her lineage is activated.

“The first swirl of the spiral” collects only a small part of a long and profound reencounter of Rodríguez Triana with her ancestry (Mhuysqa and European), the one that drives her to walk and “unwalk” the territory with her feet, hands, and heart, to return to her home, her body, her center. In the process of weaving her thoughts, that is, of connecting her ideas with the heart and concretizing them in an artistic production full of poetry and subtlety, Camila Rodríguez Triana gives us the possibility of delving into the mysteries of life, of the invisible, of what has the potential to transform us.

Paula Bossa