Residency at ArteSumapaz, July-August 2025

This summer I spent two months at ArteSumapaz, an artist residency in Cundinamarca, Colombia. I made art, made new friends, found community, found magic, made friends with butterflies, played naked outside, dug and processed clay, fired kilns, sang aloud, swam in healing water, and lived at a slow pace (just to name a few).

In my art practice, it was a gift to be around such a variety of creative minds and to be inspired in so many ways different from my usual surroundings. I branched out my practice to making ephemeral works using unfired greenware, heavily documenting my process with clay, experimenting with performance work, creating an installation, and exploring using video and sound to tell different kinds of stories from my usual work. Much of that was done through depiction of my process with clay. This was the most exciting of all of the work for me — because it introduces an entirely new element/medium which can be in dialogue with my clay work.

I thought a lot about how, much like sculpture, video is also 3 dimensional — it goes past the 2D image and introduces an element of change over time. In contrast, my past sculptural work exists in 3 dimensions in space, but it doesn’t change or evolve over time. I found that being able to integrate the element of time into my work, through both video and ephemeral greenware works, allowed me to expand the stories I’m able to tell through my work and create something entirely new (for me). This manifested in a performance installation of unfired and fired clay, and several other works of video which were inspired by challenging experiences of my past, which finally found their voices in my art this summer. I’ll be sharing more here as I continue to process the experience and complete works I began during my time there. Stay tuned <3