For more than two years, Ana María Velásquez has been focusing her attention on the “gallinazo” or vulture to carry out a thorough reflection on its conditions of existence, she has become an expert on this bird that, silent and very sociable, usually gathers in large groups or flocks. She is interested in its complex morphology, the number and shape of its plumage, its skeleton and its habits. Experts have recognized their importance and dignity, since they cohabit with man in the cities, doing the dirty work generated by waste and garbage, to the point of becoming one of the most complex elements of the ecosystem we have created.

Man has transformed the earth in a definitive and irreversible way. Analogous to the taxidermist, Velasquez works in the classification of our waste to represent this fellow traveler, fulfilling a scientific task, as she has found a niche where the leftovers are transformed into durable and expressive material. In her repertoire of sculptural material fit brushes of all kinds, milk bags, laundry hooks, in short, some of the countless everyday waste produced by man in his wisdom, modernity and culture; this sort of 'flora and fauna' that we discard after each visit to the planetary supermarket.

The living species that are classified today in families, genera, subgenera and groups, are beings that coexist in a fragile balance between the danger of extinction and the possibility of perpetuating themselves. The gallinazo is, for the moment, the traveling companion that reminds us of the need to order knowledge and work with it in an organized way. Velasquez represents it from the flexibility, dimension or color of the industrial materials recycled for this purpose.

In her work, Velasquez consciously explores, investigates material and aesthetic possibilities that oscillate between radiography and drawing, sculpture and the serial-manual production of parts (eyes, bones, feathers, legs) to give an account, from her mad scientist's workshop, of this prehistoric animal. And she does it precisely from waste that comes from our indiscriminate use of artificial and industrial materials collected and classified by her with a scientific zeal. The fact is that the imprint left by man on the planet is verified; it is deep, disseminated and undeniable.

We project our fears onto the hens; perhaps the annoyance we feel towards our own wasteful and destructive species, and may this exhibition bring us auguries of better times.

Ana Patricia Gómez Jaramillo

Director of La Balsa Arte.