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

Born in 1963 in Pitalito, Huila—a rural coca-growing region in southern Colombia—Díaz grew up immersed in the realities of armed conflict that have shaped the country’s political landscape and visual culture for over half a century. 

Based in Cali since the mid-1990s, he initially developed his career as a self-taught painter before expanding into other media. Díaz is a founding member of Helena Producciones, a grassroots artist collective formed in 1998 to build an inclusive creative community in Cali and produce a performance art festival, with eight editions to date. He has also held teaching positions at institutions including the Universidad del Valle and the Conservatorio de Bellas Artes in Cali.

Díaz works across painting, installation, video and performance, frequently drawing on imagery from popular culture, music, mass media and the visual economy of conflict. His themes include the legacy of the armed conflict, the entanglement of culture and power, and the everyday visuals of Colombia’s shifting identity. For instance, his 2017 exhibition “Quimera” examined the role of vinyl-records, popular music, guerrilla culture and commodity aesthetics in one installation. Through humour and archival tactics, Díaz interrogates how media and music have shaped and reflected social and political dynamics in Colombia.

A distinctive strand in Díaz’s work is his engagement with the leaf of the coca plant. He uses coca and coca-derived materials (such as dyes and charcoal) and installations referencing coca’s cultural, ecological and political role in Colombia. Through his works, Díaz examines the coca plant as a nexus of biodiversity, the war on drugs, cultural resistance, and chemical economies, reflecting on national, global, and indigenous histories of violence and resilience.

Wilson Díaz Polanco has achieved significant international recognition, beginning with his participation in the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and later the 10th Havana Biennial (2009). His work has been presented in major solo exhibitions, including Quimera at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City (2017), the retrospective With Wilson… two vulnerable local and visual decades at Galería Santa Fe in Bogotá (2014), and Taste and Conflict: Reasons to Connect at Museo La Tertulia in Cali (2021–2022). He has also been an artist-in-residence in the prestigious DAAD Berlin Artists Program (2017–2018), culminating in an exhibition at the daadgalerie.