Drexciya, the installation proposed by Astrid González at La Balsa Arte is an afro futuristic iteration based on the narrative created by the techno duo of the same name in Detroit, 1992. The composers sought to review, from a critical and contemporary imaginary, the myth of Atlantis.

As a fictional narrative, González creates through video, photography, sculptures and drawings, an alternative and mythical imaginary of a free society, upon summoning an underwater community descended from the pregnant women thrown into the sea in the transatlantic slave trade between 1525 and 1866.

By posing a fabulation, according to which, underneath the waves lies an isolated society inspired by myths, architectures and ancestral knowledge; a cultural counter-narrative is raised by music, one that recalls the work of Paul Gilroy ‘Atlántico Negro’ (1993), a book on black America that highlights the breadth and cultural resonance of the experiences of the African continent.

Drawing a parallel in the aesthetic field, with Jean Rahier's (1999) idea that “modes of representation are used by people to ponder the world, their own existences, as well as to ponder the existence of ‘others'. Dominant groups produce and reproduce representations of themselves and representations of ‘others’”, one of the parameters of contemporary production resides precisely in representing society, in its social, ethnic and gender dimensions, from fluid optics that serve as counterpoints to the hegemonic normativity of simple categories.

This annotation points out the utopian dimension of this work, which seeks to create, from a historical fact, a counter-narrative based on the aesthetic, performative and poetic, which challenges the literal interpretations of abjection and degradation; art itself often falls into the situation of reinforcing the evils it seeks to denounce.  González concocts a society with its own norms, of new identities immersed in a ‘pristine’ universe; this imaginary implicitly suggests a commemoration of the rebellious deeds of the palenqueros in America, who have been symbols of freedom.

Upon traversing Drexciya there is a new iteration of this myth, expanding its symbolic richness and the restrictions of its interpretation. To venture into this space is to think of breathing, breathing to invoke, to contain and release.

Text:
Ana Patricia Gómez
Astrid González
Catalina Toro

Dance: Sankofa Danzafro, María Elena Murillo, William Camilo Perlaza, Sandra Vanessa Murillo, Yndira Perea, Piter Alexander Angulo
Coreography: Rafael Mario Palacios
Acting: Fernando Hurtado
Camera and lighting: Camilo Meneses
Music: UnicamenteAndrés
Costume design: María Fernanda Zuluaga
Production support: Daniel Moná
Research support: Carolina Chacón
Images: Domo observatorio astronómico, Planetario de Medellín. Mauricio Arango.