Synaptic Emancipation

Synaptic Emancipation

NOMASMETAFORAS

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia – Francia
Materials: Video, sound recording, audiovisual archive.
Size: 13’10 Mins
Year: 2023

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Worlds

Synaptic Emancipation contrasts the narratives embedded in Western technological objects—designed to access the mysteries of the brain—with the ways in which Indigenous communities activate their own technologies by chewing coca leaves to awaken consciousness. Receiving the visions of coca through dreams opens a space of telepathic communication that does not entail the destruction of any ecosystem, unlike the production of so-called “high technology” in the West.The video features Luis Aureliano Yunda, a The’ Wala (traditional healer) from the Nasa community, who has been a close friend of the artists for over fourteen years. Their friendship has been intertwined with traditional medicine and with ceremonial, philosophical, artistic, and ritual experiences that foster collaborations between visual arts and ancestral knowledge.

The Artist

NOMASMETAFORAS

NOMASMETÁFORAS is a contemporary art and research collective founded by Clara Melniczuk and Julián Dupont, whose work unfolds between Colombia and France at the intersection of art, philosophy, and Indigenous epistemologies.

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Dreaming in Condors

Dreaming in Condors

NOMASMETAFORAS

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia – Francia
Medium: Sculpture, Performance
Materials: Canvas masks covered with yanchama fiber, filled with coca leaves, lavender, tobacco, white sage, eucalyptus, and datura; supported by black synthetic mesh, synthetic ribbons, sheep’s wool, and strips of yanchama pigmented with coca charcoal and palo santo charcoal.
Size: 150 x 90 x 30 cm
Year: 2023

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Worlds

Dreaming in Condors originates from a vision experienced by Clara Melniczuk in Puracé (Cauca), where two condors flew in perfect synchrony, following two human figures on the ground. From that dream, the artist collective NOMASMETAFORAS — formed by Melniczuk and Julián Dupont — conceived these sculptures as transitional bodies between dream and wakefulness, the human and the more-than-human.

The masks, crafted from yanchama — a traditional Amazonian bark cloth — and filled with sacred plants such as coca, tobacco, and datura, function as portals activated by vegetal memory. Each material component participates in a symbolic system that binds matter, spirit, and territory.

In collaboration with the Universidad Autónoma Indígena Intercultural (UAIIN–CRIC), the collective sustains a practice of co-creation that interlaces art, pedagogy, and ancestral knowledge, extending the work beyond its physical form into a field of spiritual and political resonance.

The Artist

NOMASMETAFORAS

NOMASMETÁFORAS is a contemporary art and research collective founded by Clara Melniczuk and Julián Dupont, whose work unfolds between Colombia and France at the intersection of art, philosophy, and Indigenous epistemologies.

Read more

More From This Artist