«The Breath of a Cave» – Mónica Naranjo at La Becque [CH]

The artistic practice of Mónica Naranjo Uribe [CO] is centred around the intimate and physical exploration of territories that she combines with scientific research, looking for a way to connect the invisible to our human scale and perceptions.

During her residency at La Becque [CH], she continued her geological-oriented investigation. After visiting different caves around Switzerland, she decided to focus on the Grottes de Vallorbe, attracted by the special acoustic of its limestone formations. She added a new layer to the sound explorations by creating sounds from different sources and recording how this particular space reflected them.

Alongside this, she worked on a site-specific installation/action at a cave entrance documented in a video that explores darkness as a material entity.

It was also part of a series she has been doing lately, that consists of inserting a fictional element into the landscape, whose movement evokes the invisible geological forces that shape the environment. The title «The Breath of a Cave» (El Aliento de Una Cueva) comes from a very simple way through which many hidden caves have been discovered throughout history – for instance, by feeling a draught of cold air coming out from a rocky wall.

“I specifically wanted to focus on the physical experience of darkness and how the lack of visibility could make me relate and think about the Earth’s interior in new ways. I chose sound as the best way to explore this, which also meant exploring uncharted territories in my own work (mainly visual). This challenging aspect was also part of my personal motivation for doing the residency, to relate to something new,” stated the artist after the process.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mónica Naranjo Uribe [CO] is a visual artist who combines her practice with scientific research. She is interested in how fiction becomes a way to enter the inaccessible and, paradoxically, allows us to connect to the natural environment more deeply. She has centred her research on geological processes to understand territories from their physical behaviour and recognize them as alive beings. She lives in Bogotá, where she combines her artistic practice with editing artists’ publications on places through her publishing project «Nomada Ediciones».