Studies
He studied at a university in the United States, and also spent time in Europe, specifically Greece, where he started to study mythology and poetry, and in his words, "became very dreamy".Reid, Calvin. "Juan Manuel Echavarria." ''Bomb Magazine'', Winter 2000, Issue 70Photography
Echavarria started to produce photography and videos in 1995 that deal with the violence and civil conflicts that have plagued Colombia in the 20th century and still today. His pictures and documentations depict a nation that has become accustomed to the brutality associated with the conflicts between the national army, guerrillaColombia: A History of Violence
In order to understand the contexts of Juan Manuel Echavarria's artwork, it is important to have a concept of Colombia's long history of violence that extends itself into the present day. Since Echavarria's birth in 1947, Colombia has not seen a year of peace. Over the last half century, Colombian violence has remained the largest conflict in the Western Hemisphere, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and displacing millions of people. The victims of the ongoing violence are mostly poor and vulnerable citizens.Rojas, Cristina, and Judy Meltzer. "Elusive Peace." New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Echavarria captures the violence that has pervaded his countryside throughout most of the 20th century in his artworks. A brief history of the different movements and groups since Echavarria's birth are listed as a backdrop to understand the perspective of the artist who provides viewers with such disturbing images.La Violencia (1946–1957)
"La Violencia" is the name of a period of devastation in Colombia that arose because of the crisis of the coffee republic, the weakness of the government, and the dispute over property.Hylton, Forrest. "Evil Hour in Colombia." New York: Verso, 2006. The assassination of a popular radical politician, Gaitan, set off the large urban riots called the Bogotázo. The Bogotázo stormed the Presidential Palace and rioted against hunger and foreign businesses. Soon the persecuted poor civilians became a powerful authority by turning into insurgent revolutionaries backed by militias. However, a lack of leadership gave conservatives who sought to rid the nation of these liberals the opportunity to deploy death squads to crush any hint of opposition.Simons, Geoff. "Colombia A Brutal History." London: SAQI, 2004. The repressive conservative regime would send armed militia into the countryside to kill resistors. Often these militias would use certain kinds of corte, or cuts, to create terror and to send messages. Tens of thousands of people were burned, disemboweled, and thrown into rivers that ran red with blood. This mass slaughter resulted in more than 300,000 people killed, many of whom were peasant men.Drug Trade (1980s-Early 1990s)
The weakness of a central government has plagued Colombia throughout its history. In the early 1980s the story was no different. The escalating violence and a climate of insecurity fostered the growth of privatized armed groups that took matters into their own hands because of their lack of confidence in the state.Rabasa, Angel, and Peter Chalk. "Colombian Labyrinth." Santa Monica: RAND, 2001. Two main guerrilla groups ( FARC and ELN), as well as paramilitary forces, fought the state. Political identities became blurred, ultimately producing no "good guys." Violent human rights atrocities continued and were being financed by the illegal drug industry. Colombia had a monopoly over the drug industry, specifically cocaine and heroin, in the Western Hemisphere which provided economic fuel for all of the different political and guerrilla parties. Drug traffickers used several methods to export these drugs into the United States, which prompted the United States to wage a war on drugs in the early 1990s.Rise of Paramilitary Groups (Late 1990s)
Money from drug trafficking allowed paramilitaries to develop extensive military capabilities. In the late 1990s, paramilitaries consolidated into a single coordinating body called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia that had national spokesmen who claimed to share political ideas. The paramilitaries became a valid and recognized part of government that stood against liberal ideology. Soon the paramilitaries began to increase troops and enforce combat squads that often resulted in massacres targeting civilian populations. This violence was once again a terror-filled way to control resources such as land, drug production, and trafficking routes.Tate, Winifred. "Counting the Dead." Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.Selected works and exhibitions
Los Desaparecidos (The Disappeared)
In 2005 at the North Dakota Museum of Art, twenty seven artists' work from South America was shown to capture the meaning of "to disappear" during the 20th century military dictatorships in Latin America. During the 1970s, people who were considered a threat to the state were often killed or "disappeared." This term, disappear, became a word describing the people who had been killed without a trace. The artists who participated in this show were all in some way affected by this kind of violence. The curator, Laurel Reuter, hoped to portray the artists’ and their native countries' plight against these atrocities.Reuter, Laurel. "The Disappeared." North Dakota Museum of ArtBocas de Ceniza (Mouths of Ashes)
In a series of videos, Echavarria shows the faces of people who are directly affected by or who have survived the massacres of the paramilitary forces and guerrilla warfare. Each person sings a song that he or she has written to help in getting through the pain and to recover from the violence that has berated the Colombian countryside. Some of the individuals in the videos are people who have been displaced by the violence and are trying to reclaim their identities as Colombian citizens.Reuter, Laurel. North Dakota Museum of ArtCorte de Florero (Flower Vase Cut)
In this series of photographs, Echavarria highlights the brutal traditional practice of mutilation that has occurred in Colombia's past where corpses are gruesomely manipulated or cut in different ways to send a message to opposing political groups. In the photographs, Echavarria arranges bones into flower patterns in order to construct a metaphor that is an evocation of the cuts of death. He asks, "What makes us perform such rituals with death? Is it that when there is so much death around you, and you are mutilating your victim, that you feel yourself to be a godlike personality- a puppeteer?" By allowing the viewer to see the bones arranged as flowers that mimic the stylized killings of the paramilitary, Echavarria provides the viewer with an opportunity to gain an insight into the outrageous violence in Colombia. Showing the bones arranged as flowers mimicking a scientific classification dehumanizes them. Echavarria demonstrates how it is necessary for one to dislocate his mind from knowing he is killing another human being in order to commit such an atrocious act.Death and the River
In 2006, Echavarria visited a cemetery near the Magdalena River in Colombia. A colorful mausoleum stood apart from others not only because of the vibrant colors, but also because the graves are marked with the letters NN, or no name. Like his photographs of the mannequins discussed earlier, the tombs represent bodies that were pulled out of the river because they were victims of the violent massacres that ravage the countryside. The people who save the bodies perform a ritual where they agree to take care of the NN tombs and to pray for their souls. In return, they will receive favors from the dead.Josee Bienvenu Gallery. "Juan Manuel Echavarria: Death and the River.Past solo exhibitions
2008 ''Death and the River'', Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York 2007 ''Bocas de Ceniza'', Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2006 ''The Witness'', Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York ''Bocas de Ceniza'', Americas Society, New York ''Mouths of Ash'', Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina ''Mouths of Ash'', Fotofest, Houston, Texas 2005 ''Mouths of Ash'', North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, North Dakota 2004 ''Guerra y Pa y Otras Series'', Universidad Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia 2003 ''Dos Hermanos y Guerra and Pa'', Rainer Maria Remarque Center, European Media Art Festival, Ossanabruck, Germany ''La Maria y Otras Series'',References