The Wound on Paper

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid has added Bowling for Medellín 4 to its permanent collection—a pivotal work in the career of Colombian artist Camilo Restrepo, renowned for his political critique. Officially acquired in June 2025, the piece holds historical, aesthetic, and political significance within both Colombian and Latin American contemporary art.
 

Restrepo’s works, which resemble open wounds on paper, are the result of a process that combines historical research, autobiographical testimony, and obsessively manual technique. Within the context of contemporary Colombian art, few artists have managed to translate the marks of violence into such physical and emotional expressions as he has.
 

With the acquisition of Bowling for Medellín 4 by the Reina Sofía, Restrepo’s art crosses a decisive institutional threshold: from local chronicle to universal memory. It is not only recognition of a work of political and aesthetic impact, but also validation of a visual language capable of translating the tensions of a society scarred by drug trafficking, corruption, and impunity.

Bowling for Medellín: A Series Against Oblivion
 

Created between 2014 and 2019, the Bowling for Medellín series consists of drawings made on multiple sheets of paper taped together. These pieces are fragile and vulnerable, but also literally marked by history: each sheet was rubbed against the pavement outside the house where the artist grew up in Medellín—a house whose windows were shattered three times by bombs targeting Pablo Escobar.

Bowling for Medellín 4 depicts a man behind a desk: a "capo," a figure of organized crime that infiltrated every corner of power during the 1980s and 1990s. No name is given, but the reference to Pablo Escobar and the ecosystem he created—and that still reverberates—is clear: a form of symbolic, political, and media domination that has defined Colombia for decades.

Techniques of the Wound

Restrepo’s technique is unconventional. Instead of seeking clean lines, he embraces erosion. He uses permanent ink, water-soluble crayons, newspaper clippings, stickers, adhesive tape, saliva, and other substances that turn the drawing into a living surface. When corrections are needed, he doesn’t erase—he cuts with a scalpel. Every correction leaves a scar.

After applying ink, each work undergoes a frottage process: the paper is soaked and rubbed against the street. The irregularities of the asphalt leave their imprint. Like a ritual of urban inscription, the drawing absorbs the marks of the real world before being colored. Finally, the piece is repaired with hundreds of meters of adhesive tape, as if undergoing surgery. Only then is color applied.

Memory and Trauma in Portable Format

One of Restrepo’s most striking decisions is to make his works foldable. They are not stretched on frames or enclosed behind glass; they are made to be folded, transported—almost as if they were contraband. This formal choice implicitly critiques the circulation of art, while also evoking the trafficking of images, symbols, and narratives that run through his homeland.

The visual content is composed of dozens of micro-images—corpses, weapons, crime scenes—gathered through Google and social media. There is a clear intent to document. His drawings on the failed war on drugs are based on a research methodology that includes newspapers such as El Tiempo. It is not an attempt to represent violence per se, but rather to reflect on the imagery of violence and its connection to popular culture.

From Medellín to Reina Sofía: A Symbolic Leap

The acquisition of Bowling for Medellín 4 by the Reina Sofía is both a political and curatorial statement. The Spanish museum, which has been increasingly expanding its focus on Latin America, incorporates a work that is not only technically and conceptually strong, but also capable of challenging official narratives about recent history.

By including this piece in its collection, the Reina Sofía acknowledges that drug-related violence is a transnational phenomenon with global implications. The work thus functions as a visual archive of the failed war on drugs, while also serving as a personal indictment of its consequences.

An Artist Between Rawness and Irony

Camilo Restrepo has exhibited in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Bogotá, and Mexico City. Yet his language has resisted the spectacular aesthetic. Instead, his work remains deliberately manual, even precarious. In a contemporary art world saturated with digital production and monumental installations, Restrepo chooses paper, ink, and wax pastel—materials that are intimate and tactile.

This choice is no accident. His drawings carry a biting irony, a distance that allows viewers to confront the horrific without falling into literalism or empty aestheticization. His line may resemble a child’s, but the images are nightmares. The humor—if it exists—is dark, ambiguous, wounding. It offers no redemption, only questions.

Visual Political Critique from the Gut

Bowling for Medellín 4 is political art, but not in the propagandistic sense. It does not represent an ideology; it reflects lived experience. It is political because it articulates what many prefer to leave unsaid. It is art because it transforms that indictment into visual language, symbolic object, and aesthetic experience.

The Reina Sofía’s acquisition validates Restrepo’s work on an institutional level and strengthens the presence of contemporary Colombian art within major museum narratives. And it does so through the wound—through trauma.

Drawing War to Survive It

For Camilo Restrepo, drawing is a form of exorcism. His works offer catharsis. They do not seek to explain, but to reveal. In Bowling for Medellín 4, every line is a fracture; every stain, a loss; every layer of color, an attempt at repair. The work does not close the wound but makes it visible. And in doing so, forces us to look.

In a time when violence is trivialized by headlines and algorithms, Restrepo’s art reminds us that every image carries weight, history, and a body. And that sometimes, the most subversive act is simply to sit down, take paper, and redraw memory.