Ana González

Colombian artist Ana González presents Llovizna, her latest solo exhibition at Galería La Cometa, where she explores the conflict surrounding water in the Andean páramos and other fragile ecosystems that function as vital watersheds. The exhibition brings together textile installations, porcelain sculptures, and photographic archives that offer a critical view of the relationship between nature and society.

Over the past two decades, Ana González’s practice has become a key voice in contemporary Colombian art. Her work moves fluidly across mediums—embroidery, installation, photography, drawing, and textile art. Rather than simply experimenting with form, her artistic approach is defined by conceptual consistency. She uses art to address what has been displaced, forgotten, or damaged: ecological memory, indigenous communities, and endangered ecosystems.

Born in Bogotá in 1974, González has developed a practice that is both research-based and collaborative. Her deep interest in community processes and traditional knowledge has led her to incorporate natural materials, territorial archives, and manual techniques into her work. She doesn’t just represent nature—she works from within it, taking an ethical and critical stance toward the environment.

Llovizna: Subtlety as Warning

In Llovizna, her most recent project, González presents a series of works inspired by the Chingaza páramo, an essential ecological reserve for the water system of Bogotá and its surrounding areas. The exhibition is structured around two main bodies of work: Serranía del Dios de la Noche, a large-format textile installation, and Flora de agua, a series of porcelain sculptures and paintings depicting plants from wetlands and watershed zones.

The visual language of Llovizna operates through subtle gestures: frayed fabrics, fading images, muted tones that evoke moss, mist, and stagnant water. While the materials are minimal, the message is clear: nature has its own rhythm, one that is being disrupted by human extractive pressures.

Through sublimated and hand-treated textiles, González transforms fabric into a sensitive surface—one that holds and communicates what is often left unsaid: the silent deterioration of ecosystems. Far from relying on spectacle, her work suggests a visual ethics grounded in attention, care, and presence in the face of the current environmental crisis.

Form as Resistance

A central theme in Ana González’s work is materiality as a form of resistance. In Serranía del Dios de la Noche, nine large textile pieces arranged in a crescent disrupt the conventional linear gallery format. The viewer doesn’t pass through the work; they move around it, becoming immersed in the space it creates.

In Flora de agua, each plant—frailejones, bromeliads, mosses—functions not only as an ecological symbol but also as a form of knowledge. The use of porcelain emphasizes the tension between fragility and permanence. In González’s hands, delicacy is not weakness—it’s value.

With Llovizna, she extends her inquiry into visual representation. While her earlier projects often centered on human displacement and territorial loss, this time she gives agency to the land itself. It’s not people who tell the story here—it’s the páramos, the plants, the water. Nature becomes a subject, not a backdrop.
 

Hilos de río, mar y selva: A Vital Journey

The book Hilos de río, mar y selva is not just a compilation of works; it is a visual map of the relationship between art, territory, and ancestral knowledge. Through its pages, readers encounter a careful and heartfelt documentation of González’s work in contexts shaped by biodiversity, indigenous memory, and invisible knowledges.

More than just a visual record, the publication outlines a way of thinking in which art becomes a cultural mediator. Here, her collaborations with Uitoto, Misak, and Wayuu communities are not illustrative add-ons—they are a structural part of a process that challenges the traditional hierarchies of contemporary art.

A highlight of the book is Nymphaea Salvaje, a project where the artist works with Amazonian flowers, recording both their physical traits and their spiritual meanings. Each species, recreated in porcelain, serves a symbolic function within its community—purifying water, wind, or earth. The book becomes a platform for dialogue between botany, anthropology, and aesthetics.

Art as a Bridge Between Knowledges

A defining trait of Ana González’s practice is her ability to connect diverse fields—science, botany, indigenous cosmology—through her work. These disciplines coexist in her projects without hierarchy, allowing oral tradition and scientific archives to intersect seamlessly.

This becomes evident in her treatment of water. Rather than portraying it as a resource, she frames it as a relationship. In her work, water is not a commodity—it is a boundary, a passage, a form of care. From the highland páramos to the sea, González creates a visual narrative that invites viewers to reconsider their own connection to what they call “nature.”

Keywords That Define Her Work

Throughout her career, Ana González has asked urgent questions about the role of art amid social and ecological crises. Her work sustains critical inquiry without sacrificing aesthetic depth or formal rigor.

In this context, terms like ecological memory, contemporary textile art, fabric as language, Chingaza páramo, and ecosystem as archive become central to understanding the richness of her vision. These are not just labels—they are entry points for exploring how art can meaningfully engage with the world.

Consistency as a Political Gesture

The clarity, sensitivity, and conceptual strength of Ana González’s work affirm her place as one of the most relevant figures in contemporary Colombian art. Her practice weaves together materials, territories, and languages in a proposition that is both poetic and political.

Llovizna is not just an exhibition about plants or the páramo. It is a wake-up call to protect what can still be saved. González reminds us that ecosystems are also archives, that art can help us read them, and that every aesthetic gesture is, ultimately, an ethical one.