We All Believe in the Same God

A Guernica-inspired portrait of suffering. 

'We All Believe in the Same God,' an exhibition of works intended to portray victims' perspectives on Colombia's long armed conflict, was mostly a bit too abstract for my tastes  and comprehension. 

Parts of the exhibit, in the National University's art museum (by the campus's Ave. 30 entrance), make haunting abstract allusions to the conflict's human toll, including caskets suspended in space, a simple coil of barbed wire laid innocently on the floor and a wall-sized video of water flowing. 

But the only work which really moved me was a version of Picasso's great painting Guernica. The original painting portrays the suffering of the Spanish people after the city of the same name was bombed by German and Italian planes on the request of Spanish fascist forces. It's appropriate enough. Colombians' sufferings have been on a comparable scale, altho the two nations' conflicts have huge differences.

A detail from the Guernica-style painting.

'Y Creemos en al Mismo Dios.'

An infant emerges from an egg. A warning?  Make of it what you will.

A coil of rusted barbed wire. 

Damaged text seems about to fall off of the page. 

Sea shells or fossilized cartridges?

Reminds me of Van Gogh.  

The books about Colombia's conflict on sale nearby moved me a lot more than the art did. These books are about forced displacement and massacres.

Scary guys. Remind me of one of Goya's works. 

Contemplating phantom caskets?

Water flows past on a great screen. Carrying away memories or the vidtims themselves?

                                                         Caskets cover a wall.                                                      

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours