Isabella Arenas, César Reina, Dayana Barón, Liliana Rodríguez, and Michael Angarita were selected by the MAC and the Minuto de Dios University Corporation, Uniminuto, to participate in the exhibition “Thesis Project 2024: The Best Graduation Projects in Colombia.”
This national recognition comes after being nominated by the Industrial University of Santander (UIS) as the most outstanding graduation projects of 2023 from the academic Artes Plásticas program offered by the Instituto de Proyección Regional y Educación a Distancia, IPRED UIS.
“The thesis is a project that takes a year or even more to complete, as its planning can start beforehand. Therefore, it is a long-term endeavor that requires a lot of effort, which is why seeing the work well received in the art world is both a pleasure and an honor,” expressed Isabella Arenas.
She added, “The call selects the best theses defended last year, which is why I can say that these colleagues who were chosen alongside me are friends and peers with whom I shared the entire process of project defense and exhibition. Now, seeing their works also selected makes me very happy.”
Expectations are high because this is not only a recognition of the university process undertaken over the last five years but also an opportunity to share with peers, authorities, individuals in the art world, critics, and the most rigorous evaluators they will encounter in their professional lives: the public. As Alejandro Sanz says, it is undoubtedly about moving forward “with a firm step” with the project that compiled their undergraduate formation process and led them to achieve the highest academic triumph: their professional degree as Maestro en Artes Plasticas UIS de la Universidad Industrial de Santander.
“It is important for UIS to be present in these spaces because it gives visibility to our Artes Plásticas program. Having my graduation project among the best theses nationally is primarily an incentive to continue my artistic process, now as a professional artist from UIS,” added Isabella Arenas.
The Graduates and their works
The Bogotá Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), located at Carrera 74 # 82-A-81, Plaza Principal Minuto de Dios, founded in 1966, will host the exhibition “Thesis Project 2024: The Best Graduation Projects in Colombia” until mid-October, where the following works will be featured:
*María Isabella Arenas Hernández
Work: “West Room: Not Compatible with Life”
It arises from the meticulous review of the clinical archive created by her father, Dr. Libardo Arenas, during his career as the scientific deputy director of the González Valencia Hospital in Bucaramanga. The concept of “not compatible with life” is a phrase used in medicine to categorize fetuses with malformations so invasive that they cannot survive outside the womb. The work records, documents, and presents unborn bodies that exhibit some of the infinite ways in which a human body can mutate.
* Gloria Liliana Rodríguez García
Work: “The Garden of Natives
This artistic creation evokes the relationship humans weave with nature as an aesthetic approach to the forms and properties of native plants, which are attributed with healing and, in some cases, magical properties based on traditional knowledge. These plants grow in mountains, riverbanks, house gardens, under direct sunlight, or in the shade of trees and shrubs.
* Michael Angarita Tarazona
Work: “I Will Reign”
The debut work of Fine Arts Master Michael Angarita, who, through various media and strategies, presents a series of reflections on the ambiguous relationship between religion and contemporary artistic practices. This relationship, viewed through the lens of Divinomaik—an alter ego created by the artist—unfolds through connections, speculations, and marginal notes on the image, the body, and the spaces where the religious manifests as a mystery that should not be questioned. However, through art and its formal possibilities, many of which use humor, the sacred-unchallenged is revealed as an open field that can be reviewed, commented on, and revisited.
* César Augusto Reina Medrano, Cum Laude Fine Arts Master UIS
Work: “Matter of Perception, Beyond the Gaze”
Through the senses, especially sight, we capture images of the world around us, and these images are stored in our memory, forming a mosaic of experiences that shape our identity. Visual perception, therefore, is not merely a passive act of receiving information; it is an active process of interpretation influenced by our experiences, beliefs, and values. When faced with different viewpoints—whether in art, culture, politics, or religion—we have the opportunity to expand our understanding of the world. Seeing other perspectives challenges us to step out of our comfort zone and confront our own beliefs and prejudices. This act of seeing and understanding through others’ eyes is an exercise in empathy, an essential skill for human understanding and peaceful coexistence.
* Dayana Barón Torres
Work: “Presences; Cartography of Cadaverous Flora”
This work stems from the review of the archive of the Archdiocesan Catholic Cemetery of Bucaramanga and from various walks through its hallways, pantheons, and ossuaries, observing the cadaverous flora that exists there to document the space. Additionally, the project is based on these actions—archive review and walks—creating a work where the viewer can observe an allegorical cartography, that is, a cartography elaborated from the artist’s intimate perspective. Through techniques such as plates, drawing, engraving, and video, the project aims to present an archival cartography in the gallery that narrates the myths of the Archdiocesan Catholic Cemetery and collects aspects like the ornamentation of its tombs and the cadaverous flora present in their concavities.
In these pieces, myths about the flora that naturally grows in the necropolis, where human life rests, are related. Life blooms in the goodness of those who are no longer there, as a myth that traverses the hallways of the place where the qualities once possessed by people are highlighted, making their tombs naturally flourish, allowing their presence to magically blossom in the collective imagination.