The Galería Santa Fe Lands in La Candelaria

Hitchhiker headed to Colombia.

The city-owned Galería Santa Fe, one of Bogotá's best-known art galleries, has moved to La Candelaria from its long-time home in the Teusaquillo neighborhood. The gallery's former abode was a rented site in a house, which was sold, forcing the move. However, it's new site, on Calle 12B, a few doors above Carrera 3, is also rented, meaning that it's probably only temporary. There's a possibility of the gallery moving into a permanent space in the nearby La Concordia public market, but nothing is concrete, a gallery employee told me.

The Santa Fe was founded in 1981, when it occupied a space in the city's Planetarium. Originally, it exhibited works by young Colombian artists, but has since expanded to artists of all ages, and even foreign artists.

With the Santa Fe's arrival, La Candelaria now has some four art galleries.

As for the art...its merits are in the eye of the beholder.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The House of the Female Orgasm

But not THAT sort of house. This house is in La Candelaria, a few doors south of Bogotá Bike Tours, where Frenchman Thierry Harribey has turned his home into an informal art gallery with periodic exhibitions.

The one which just ended today is by Cartagena artist Lila Isabel Miranda and is about that elusive and culturally-charged phenomenon: the female orgasm. According to an article in El Tiempo, Mirando enclosed herself for weeks with two women models to take the photos on which she based the paintings.

The female orgasm has become something of a symbol of women's sexual liberation. But, ironically, sex researchers believe that women probably inherited it from men, since it only a reproductive purpose only for males.

The exhibition's curators said that during the inauguration, when the artist offered kisses and affection  all around and talked about topics including masturbation, lots of the young visitors turned red with embarrasment. Also, one day a young man visiting the exhibition declared he was coming out of the closet as gay.

A visitor writes: 'Thanks from all women.'

"Which do you make: sex or love?"

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Flowering of Art in La Macarena

Biodiversity bulls eye: An exhibition at Peregrino gallery and flower shop looks at Colombia's violence and its impact on biodiversity. 

La Macarena, the trendy central Bogotá neighborhood above the bullfighting plaza, has grown rapidly over the last few years, with new restaurants, erotica (including an afrodisiac restaurant) and several art galleries, making about six galleries in all.

At the moment, two of them, the Peregrino gallery/flower shop on Carrera 5 near 26th St., is displaying prints of sketches about Colombia's violence and biodiversity - two things the country has a great abundance of. Violence and biodiversity have a complex relationship in this country. On the one hand, the complex armed conflict between guerrillas, the military, paramilitary forces and drug cartels has damaged lots of natural areas, much of it caused by both the drug economy and the government efforts to erradicate drug crops. But the country's violence has also frightened oil, coal and other resource extraction industries from many of Colombia's remote regions, conserving them, albeit unintentionally.

Another work at Peregrino. 

The Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, just south of Peregrino, has a show of photographs by Colombian-America artist Steve Ferry, also about Colombia's culture of violence, but from a more cotidian perspective. These photos show scenes from corralejas, a tradition in cattle raising towns in which young men, often drunken, play at bullfighting. Many get gored in this coming of age thing.

People react to corraleja violence. 

Colombians are wonderful people, but the country has suffered chronic violence in the forms of multiple civil wars, drug-financed guerrilla and cartel violence and an unjustifiably high rate of homicides. I can only think that this results from all of the black market money from the drug trade which finances these groups and Colombia's very unequal wealth distribution: a situation which is often correlated with high violence rates.

FARC guerrilla fighters with now-deceased FARC founder Manuel Marulanda. 

A bull charges with a cape wrapped around its head. 

The Alonso Garces Gallery on the north end of the same block of Carrera 5 has an exposition by Ana Mercedes Hoyos called 'Lazos de Sangre' (Blood Ties) about slavery and AfroColombian history, altho not many of the works have specific images about those subjects.

A few years ago these giant ants were placed on the Congress building and other  Bogotá monuments. They represent the nation's displaced people, and the ants' body parts were molded using skulls. 

Galeria Dos Casas, on Calle 26c above Carrera 4, which opened in May, has this exhibition called 'In Corpus Hominis' about the human body. 

See also: Bogotá's Contemporary Art Fair 2011

Find La Macarena's art galleries on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MacarenaArte 

Valenzuela Klenner: Carrera 5 No. 26-28 Tel: 243-7752

Peregrino: Carrera 5 No. 26b-52 Tel: 283-3845 or Cel: 310-297-8308

Alonso Garces: On the corner of Carrera 5 and Calle 26c

Galeria Dos Casas: Calle 26c No. 4-23 Tel: 286-0209 Cel: 321-205-4122

Galeria Mu: Carrera 4 No. 26b Tel: 282-0496

Galeria Mundo: Las Torres del Parque, the tall apartment building on Carrera 5 above the bullfighting stadium.

N-CE Arte Carrera 5 No. 26B-76

Luvina Libreria: Carrera 5 No. 26c-06

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours