Behind the phenomena of the depletion of the earth's natural resources lies an invisible and silent force. We do not see it because it hides even in the most everyday acts of our days, indeed, it is so naturalized in us that without realizing it we feed it, pursuing its promises of a better life. Large-scale production, excessive consumption, extraction, exploitation, disadvantage, domination and dispossession are some of the strategies of its intelligent and subtle game. The real MaldeTierra.

How to confront this evil, how to remedy the open wounds it leaves in its wake? One possible approach is mending with thread and needle; superimposing gauze and silk as bandages to protect and embrace the earth; making use of scraps and fabric residues; taking advantage of tears, wear and tear, traces, imperceptible marks and all the memory contained in the textile material.

These actions of resistance are inserted in the creation of each textile piece proposed by Juliana Correa. The process of elaboration of her works is slow and meticulous: each thread and scrap is carefully selected among her large pantry of waste. The hours of hand and machine sewing become obsessive gestures of repetition and superposition but also of subtraction, almost as a way of translating her thoughts and concerns. The various processes of experimentation to which she submits the materials to transform them propose a constant dialogue between her action and the raw material that inspires her.

Until recently, textile art in the 20th century was associated with craftsmanship. Today its importance is recognized on the processes of abstraction, associated with a shift from the picture plane to the plane of space in contemporary art. In addition, a shift towards the recognition and appreciation of technique and the symbolic, political and cultural value that underlies textile art, make it a powerful language to rethink contemporaneity. Correa creates an intimate work, historically linked to moments of the formation of modernity where the importance of the feminine contribution is just beginning to be recognized.  But today, she advances on the idea of modernity, inserting her thought in the new paradigm, in the global crisis that impels us to rethink the means, the resources and our deep relationship with the evils that beset the earth.   

There is then, at the base of the artist's plastic exploration and her particular relationship with textiles, a critical vision and a way of making visible the situation of environmental precariousness, coming largely from the forms of capitalist accumulation in which we are immersed.

Ana Patricia Gómez Jaramillo