Indigenous agency through visual narratives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

Abstract

This article focuses on the Wiwa community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. This community has been reviving its traditional music as part of an effort to reconstruct its social network. Moreover, its members have recently embraced visual arts as a versatile medium in the context of the armed conflict. The local community of Siminke has started using visual tools not only to explicitly address their social and political issues on a regional level, but also to develop a new cultural space for self-expression and social (re)construction. Video and photography are being used here to preserve a cultural knowledge traditionally transmitted from generation to generation, a process disrupted by the armed conflict in the region. Methodology encompasses communicative methods such as interviews, visual analysis and photo-elicitation in order to understand and highlight the community’s internal perspective on the use of visual arts to reinforce their agency in pursuit of political goals.