Flaky Landscapes – Work with the nails

06
Jan

Flaky Landscapes – Work with the nails

Edinson Quiñones

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials: Digital Print
Size: 15 x 25 cm
Year: 2012 – 2019

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Politics

The series Flaky Landscapes – Work with the nails presents miniature scenarios integrating model figures, bills, coca leaves, and cocaine crystals representing everyday situations where European and American characters immerse themselves in the “Colombian snow”.

The Artist

Edinson Quiñones

Edinson Javier Quiñones Falla Campo Zemanate is an artist of Nasa descent, born in La Plata, Huila (Colombia) in 1982. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts and a Master’s degree in Arts Integrated with the Environment from the University of Cauca.

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Narco pedagogical advertisement

06
Jan

Cortesía del artista

Cortesía del artista

Narco Pedagogical Advertisement

Edinson Quiñones

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials: Fabric printed banners
Size: 140 x 30 cm
Year: 2015 – 2017

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Politics

Narco Educational Advertisements is a series of banners that reproduce the aesthetic of Colombian street advertising from the 2000s, showing the prices of cocaine and “perico,” a colloquial term for cocaine. This series is activated by the artist through conversations in streets and parks about drug legalization and the future of coca. Through these conversations, Quiñones questions the global misinformation about the plant and the reality of cocaine consumption.

The Artist

Edinson Quiñones

Edinson Javier Quiñones Falla Campo Zemanate is an artist of Nasa descent, born in La Plata, Huila (Colombia) in 1982. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts and a Master’s degree in Arts Integrated with the Environment from the University of Cauca.

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If it’s Bayer, it’s good

06
Jan

If it’s Bayer, it’s good

Edinson Quiñones

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials: Digital Print
Size: 100 x 80 cm
Year: 2017

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Politics

In the work If it’s Bayer, it’s good, Quiñones appropriates the symbol of the German company to point to the role of the European and North American pharmaceutical industry in stripping the sacred coca leaf of its ancestral meaning. Since the extraction of the psychoactive alkaloid cocaine by european scientist, the plant became of popular use for scientific purposes, as anaesthesia in dental surgeries (although later replaced with less risky substances).

Following the mid-19th-century extraction of cocaine from the coca leaf by German chemists Gaedcke and Niemann in around 1860s, the plant entered European scientific and medical pharmaceutical industry. This chemical research enabled companies such as Merck and Bayer to commercialize isolated plant compounds, transforming coca from a sacred Andean plant into an industrial medical substance.

The Artist

Edinson Quiñones

Edinson Javier Quiñones Falla Campo Zemanate is an artist of Nasa descent, born in La Plata, Huila (Colombia) in 1982. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts and a Master’s degree in Arts Integrated with the Environment from the University of Cauca.

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The Parakeet Won’t Knock Down the Dove

06
Jan

Foto: Mariana Reyes

Cortesía del artista

Foto: Mariana Reyes

The Parakeet Won’t Knock Down the Dove

Edinson Quiñones

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials: Impresión sobre satín
Size: 100 x 80 cm
Year: 2024

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Worlds

The work The Parakeet Won’t Knock Down the Dove emerges as part of a project commissioned by the organization Más Arte Más Acción, which invited Colombian artists to rethink national symbols through the creation of a flag. Quiñones makes a statement through an image that invites reflection on the role of the coca plant in Colombia’s history of violence. Through the symbol of the dove, he suggests the importance of the coca plant in crop substitution policies and the transition to peace in conflict zones.

The Artist

Edinson Quiñones

Edinson Javier Quiñones Falla Campo Zemanate is an artist of Nasa descent, born in La Plata, Huila (Colombia) in 1982. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts and a Master’s degree in Arts Integrated with the Environment from the University of Cauca.

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Artist Manifesto, Point 4 of the Peace Agreements

06
Jan

Photo: Alejandro Neira

Photo: Alejandro Neira

Photo: Mariana Reyes

Artist Manifesto, Point 4 of the Peace Agreements

Edinson Quiñones

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials: Mambe powder
Size: 100 x 70 cm
Year: 2024

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Worlds

His work, Artist Manifesto, Point 4 of the Peace Agreements, presents a biography of the artist in which he speaks about how his personal experience has been central to his artistic production, written in the Nasa language as part of his lineage. Using mambe (coca powder mixed with Yarumo ash), Quiñones constructs an ephemeral narrative that highlights the oral nature of Indigenous language and underscores the need to rethink the use of the coca plant in the substitution of illicit crops and the transition to peace.

The Artist

Edinson Quiñones

Edinson Javier Quiñones Falla Campo Zemanate is an artist of Nasa descent, born in La Plata, Huila (Colombia) in 1982. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts and a Master’s degree in Arts Integrated with the Environment from the University of Cauca.

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