Well, Some of It's Art

In conjunction with the ArtBo exposition going on in the Corferias convention center, various galleries in La Candelaria are putting on their own shows. This is from the Misol gallery on the corner of Carrera 3 and Calle 12D.

Is it art? Some of it. Other's just plain obscenity, it seems to me. But the gallery's worth a walk thru, and while you're at it you can also visit several other local galleries. You'll have a much lower-key art experience than in Corferias.

A match by any other name.

Why is this horse in the living room?

Suburban nude.

Why am I standing here naked?

Two ladies in a kitchen. Transcendental!

An artist gave a lecture this afternoon about the nature of consciousness.

Artsy types.

A study in copulation.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Can Religion and Eroticism Mix?

A 'Hidden Women' exhibition gets hidden itself.

Read our lips: Stylized vaginas
make a statement about
oppression.

Nobody who's been to a Latin American carnaval can doubt that Catholicism and eroticism do mix.

However, when the Museo Santa Clara, located in an historic convent off of Plaza Bolivar, scheduled an exhibition by Colombian artist María Eugenia Trujillo utilizing eroticism to make a statement about the control of women's bodies, conservative Catholic organizations protested and filed suit calling the artwork an "attack on the freedom of religion." Two days ago, a judge ordered the exhibition 'Hidden Women' (Mujeres Ocultas) closed on the eve of its inauguration.

The museum's shut door with legal notices
about the exhibition's closure.

Trujillo says she uses eroticism, female bodies and even a stylized vagina in the exhibition to denounce repression and control of women's bodies. The images I've seen are abstract enough that we couldn't be certain they were parts of human anatomy if we hadn't been told they were. It's hard to avoid the impression that for some people (read: el Procurador General) sexuality is beyond the pale, particularly when it is mixed with feminism. Ttujillo's art may be good or bad, but it doesn't look like the "open attack on the nation's Catholic community" as one Catholic organization charged.

Is the exhibition's closure - which may be temporary - censorship? I've seen much more polemical works in private spaces in Bogotá. If this exhibition were not in a publicly-owned church, the conservative Catholic organizations would have no prayer of closing it. The exhibit's organizers could move it to many other sites where it would cause fewer waves - and receive less attention. This was, after all, a Catholic institution, even if it's now used as a secular museum.

All of which evidences a much-repeated point: opposition, censorship and controversy generate attention. If not for the Catholic's protests, this exhibit would have come and gone unnoticed and unseen except by a few in this little-known museum.

But the media goes crazy over anything involving sex and polemics -which gave Trujillo's work incalculable free attention. So much for censorship.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Sensuous Celebration for a Sexy Sculpture

The bowls are carried by AfroColombian street vendors on Colombia's coasts, where they use them to carry fruits on their heads.

 During a bike tour today, we came upon this small troupe of erotic AfroColombian women dancers around the Enrique Grau sculpture of scantily dressed woman in front of the National Park. The location and them were appropriate, since Grau's work, named 'Rita 5:30 p.m., represents a prostitute.

The dancers certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves, as the dance became more erotic. A recording playing in the background talked of the eroticism of AfroColombian women.

The erotic dance was financed by the District's Institute of Patrimony, which is evidently pretty broad-minded. (Bad pun unintended). One of the event's organizers told me that the event's purpose was to encourage the public to respect city monuments and not graffiti them. Events are planned for other monuments, she said.

The dancers evidently were enjoying themselves, as was the audience and - hopefully - Rita as well.

Write something sex on my legs, baby.

Can you read my leg, baby?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Erotic Art in La Nacho

Here are a few, less explicit, shots of the erotic art exhibit going on in the National University's handsome Rogelio Salmona Building, the Graduate Human Sciences Faculty. The works were loaned by the American Museum of Erotic Art, an internet-only institution. The exhibition is called 'Censurarte', altho only some of the works have actually been censored, organizers, from the arts magazine Contestarte, told me. 

Looking at the works, many of which are very explicit, made me wonder how many United States universities would display them, and how much controversy they'd generate. 

The exhibition continues until Sept. 19th. 

A visitor's note asks: 'Why do we censor ourselves?'

This was the first time I'd entered, or even seen, the Rogelio Salmona building, which was designed by and named after Colombia's most famous architect. The handsome, warm brick building makes a tremendous contrast with most of the rest of the Nacho's block-shaped, unimaginative buildings.

Most of the campus's other buildings look like these.

An overhead view of the Rogelio Salmona building. (Photo from Arquitecto Manuel Villota.)

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