I don’t believe in our superiority as humans at all
I actually am in awe with the small
Well I never thought I could be an artist
Because I didn’t know how to draw
I thought maybe I could be an architect like my parents
After a year and a half of architecture
I transferred to the art department and I was not looking back
I’ll give you a tour
This is a tree fern and you see these little spiral shapes
Do you see them in this?
I have loved this since my childhood We have this in Colombia
The same tree because Gondwana and Australia, we’re connected
South America and Australia were once part of Gondwanaland
When I decided to live here I thought I would connect to this continent through nature
And especially through the animals
I thought, I want to do something very Australian
but a kangaroo is too cliché So I went to sheep
The next animal that I chose to work with was emu
I worked with the feathers I worked with the skin
I worked with the eggs and with the legs
I never imagined moving to Australia
My universe was first Colombia and then I moved to New York to study but I’d never
met any Australians
I came to check it out and I loved being closer
to nature
Nature is more present in Australia
This is a leaf-curling spider It looks like a dead leaf
But it has been stitched together by this
I love working at the edge of perception
What fascinates me about the small is that it’s even more complex than the big
I work with live animals including live fleas
‘Ladies and gentlemen’
‘We’re here today to see the smallest show on Earth’
'Flea Circus' was a very transformative project
It completely changed the way I made art
It became narrative
It became humorous
It was about parallel worlds
Fleas are big enough that you can see them
with your plain eye
So it was really at the edge of perception
and I love that space
When I was doing research about the fleas
I read this quote that cracked me up
Which described the male apparatus of the
flea as the most elaborate genital structure ever in the natural world
Decades later I was looking for a new project
A new direction
And I remembered that quote
I went to the library at the Australian Museum
Which is the museum of natural history
And I spent a whole summer going book by book
Looking for the reproductive organs of all sorts of creatures
What I found really opened my eyes, this big
Humans, we need to be more humble
There was so much diversity, so much complexity
I thought, this is not just one piece
This is a museum
We tend not to talk about things that are difficult and uncomfortable like death or sex
I lived through one of the most violent and
dangerous eras in Colombian history
We were confronted with death, with terrorism
on a daily basis
So I think it was a process of grieving and
representing death
And being able to look at it, face it, and talk about it
For me art is freedom
And, of course, it’s informed by the natural world