Basurero Utópico

“What today is called an art object is a degraded understanding of a magical object”” Claes Oldenburg. The Vision Institute’s Visionaries program begins its history with a tribute to women in art with a selection of Alicia’s retrospective work Barney (Cali, 1952) In the 1970s, this pioneer of visual arts in Colombia took a step towards practices that had been little explored in Colombia, such as earth art or ecological art.

Barney’s work is profoundly ritual and, at the same time, makes aggressive but silent protest cries, it is subtle to the extent that his poetics, although harsh and cynical, are intimate, feminine and very calm. Its practice is silent because art, despite more attempts and utopian efforts, has not managed to change society. This tension underlies the works of Barney, who from a very young age began to lose faith in contemporary society.

Since its inception in the 1970s, his work shows an interest in transcendental, almost metaphysical works in which essential problems of society such as the destruction of the environment and nature, overpopulation and hunger are questioned. But beyond the critical discourse towards politics and aggressive consumption that was very current among the youth of the time, Barney’s pieces revealed a singular character.

Maintaining a critical and daring position, Barney generates his work through rituals and creative processes that start from a spiritual and intuitive horizon that allow him mystical connections with art. His works on the impacts of the industry on nature were pioneers in the country, not only in artistic terms, but also in environmental terms. There has been talk of his work as a biovanguard. Works like Río Cauca (1981-82), in which water was collected from various points of the river in order to demonstrate the degree of contamination, are a sublime artistic piece and at the same time a scientific document of political denunciation.

Another field of study of Barney is the passage of time and everyday life. From a very young age he was interested in Inca calendars and several of his pieces highlight periodicity. Diarios objetos (1977 and 1979) are works based on journeys through streets or mountains in which the artist collects leaves, things and debris that are fragments of everyday life and with which she maps her own existence. Stratification of a Utopian Dumpster (1985), is a piece that starts from the aesthetic principles of minimalism, in the sense of the repetition of the same geometric element. However, that purist aesthetic of this artistic movement is perverted by a social and political sense. Ten acrylic tubes were filled with elements typical of geological stratification and the upper part was filled with garbage, charcoal and sand. This way of sealing the garbage allows its decomposition and thus in 5 years the land can be reused. Although she was branded eccentric for using concepts like Biodegradable, Barney has maintained a militant stance on the relationship between art and nature.”