Movement for the Liberation of the Coca Plant

Movement for the Liberation of the Coca Plant

Wilson Díaz Polanco

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials:
Neón
Medium: Sculpture, Installation, Digital Art / New Media
Size: 140 × 114 × 5.5 cm
Year: 2012 – 2014

Line of Inquiry:

Coca-Politics

In this neon installation, Wilson Díaz transforms a simple phrase, “Movimiento de liberación de la planta de coca”, into a luminous declaration. The work reclaims the coca plant from decades of stigma tied to drug policy and the armed conflict in Colombia. By inscribing this call to liberation in glowing light, Díaz invites viewers to reflect on how language, power, and perception shape the fate of both plants and people.

The piece challenges official narratives of eradication and control, proposing instead a symbolic and literal “liberation” of the coca leaf. Díaz advocates for recognizing the plant’s ancestral, medicinal, and cultural dimensions, which have been overshadowed by its association with narcotrafficking. Through its simplicity and clarity, the neon text becomes both artwork and manifesto, a call to restore the coca plant’s dignity and to envision new, decolonial relationships between nature, politics, and society.

The Artist

Wilson Díaz Polanco

Wilson Díaz Polanco is a Colombian visual artist exploring the sociopolitical landscape of Colombia through popular culture, armed conflict, and media representation.

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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.

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