Andrés Bedoya

Within his body of work, personal history is woven with that of the Andean region of Latin America. With a strong emphasis on materiality as a storytelling and conceptual device, he uses both ephemeral and precious materials to reflect on time, memory, family, territory, nature, mourning, the body and collective experiences.
He often refers to his work as an abstracted autobiographical narrative. A story told through the framing of his own personal experience within a broader social and historical context. In his work, history is not only defined as the recording or retelling of past events but also the production and organization of meaning through memory in real time. Utilizing different mediums, and methods, each object, video, or installation is situated within an ever expanding and contracting social, cultural, economic and political framework.
A key aspect of his practice is the exploration of ideas about our bodies and how we engage with them. In his work the body is not only regarded as biological or physical structure but also an experience, an action, and vessel for meaning and culture. As such he suggests that they are shaped by intersecting forces. These include histories and how they inform the present, the self within the collective, the negotiation between private and public spheres, health and illness and the body as refuge and confinement. Furthermore, he is interested in exploring rituals and belief systems through which we negotiate identity, contradictions between nature and progress, presence and absence, celebration and mourning and ultimately love and loss.
Employing materials including silver, cigarette ash, hair, leather and fruit; concepts such as time and stillness; devices including repetition and craft techniques and elements derived from both formal and informal cultural practices, the meaning of his work is frequently found within its own contradictions, much like Bolivia or Latin America.