Jeisson Castillo (MA. in Visual Arts, Javeriana University, Bogotá) is a young painter, photographer, and audiovisual producer whose work focuses on the peasant and indigenous communities of Colombia. As part of various projects commissioned by the government and non-governmental organizations, he has traveled extensively in rural areas, including the entire Amazon basin of Colombia, where he has immersed himself in the traditional knowledge and ancestral wisdom of many indigenous peoples who are at risk of physical and cultural extinction.
His visual production has been exhibited in Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, France, Brazil, Norway, and the United States. Currently, he combines illustration, painting, performance, video, and anthropological research in his artistic practice. In endowing his images with spirit, his most recent work explores in particular the use of sacred plants and non-human entities.
In his own words: “My work is an exercise in searching, traveling, and learning. First, you always must go over the territory, recognizing and remembering with the help of elders and medicine men and women; it is at this moment when I receive instructions, tasks, sometimes assignments that I must approach conceptually, and sometimes concrete images that I must recreate as actions or rituals. Then comes the production of my work, which is always an immersion. My art is experiential, therefore everything that happens in everyday life influences the pieces in process.
Formally, in my painting, I try to blend materials- from my western heritage, the minerals: oil, turpentine, canvas- from my indigenous and African heritage, the sacred plants: tobacco, yagé, borrachero… as well as quartz, soil, and incense. Through experimentation I have found that these materials allow me to link paintings to the spirit of the people, non-human entities, plants, and territories that I portray.”
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