Susana Mejía

Medellín, Colombia, 1978.

At the art institute, Susana Mejía studied painting, developing a particular interest in color. However, disillusionment with the art scene eventually led her to undertake “social work” in the form of weaving workshops for inmates at a women’s prison in Medellín. The result of these workshops was a large number of fique fiber weavings, which Susana kept for years.

Around the same time, Mejía began traveling to the Amazon with the aim of acquiring firsthand knowledge of this last ecological frontier. On one of her trips to a settlement near the Amazon River, she saw a brightly colored liquid cooking over an open fire and was surprised to learn it was a dye extracted from local seeds. Fascinated by the idea that such intense and seemingly artificial colors could come from a plant, Susana decided to learn more. This intention eventually evolved into Color Amazonia, a project that spanned seven years and through which she was able to identify the plants most commonly used as pigments in that part of the Amazon. She developed the project with a team of other artists, anthropologists, botanists, photographers, and filmmakers.

The project required the creation of a small centralized garden to plant relevant trees and shrubs in order to ensure a steady supply. But in addition, significant work was done in the local communities. Susana conducted interviews with women to learn the methods they used to extract the pigments.

The knowledge of natural dyeing is, so to speak, a vanishing practice; increasingly cheap, mass-produced goods are reaching even the most remote parts of the world. Today, even in the Amazon, it is easier to buy branded, prefabricated T-shirts than to grow fibers, harvest them, spin them, weave them, and finally dye the fabric with natural pigments. In this way, Color Amazonia represents an important effort to preserve local intellectual heritage.

Color Amazonia focused on eleven plants: Achiote, Amacizo, Palo Brasil, Bure, Chontaduro, Cudi, Turmeric (the only non-native plant in the region), Chokanary, Llorón, Huitillo, and Huito. The project’s results took multiple forms: dyed fique fibers hung on clotheslines (as they would be left to dry in the jungle); woven fique fibers; papers saturated with pigments forming textures resembling rivers and topographies; an herbarium with specimens collected in the rainforest; a series of monotypes using the plants as printing matrices; a video narrating the entire experience; and a sound bank recorded in the jungle.

Susana Mejía’s project is visually striking, but she resists calling it an installation or even art. For her, Color Amazonia is a way of presenting the results of her ethnobotanical research. That strong aesthetic presence simply happens—almost in spite of itself.

Text extracted and translated from
Weavers of Water: A Chronicle of Rivers
Written by José Roca & Alejandro Martin.

EDUCATION
1997–2001 | Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2014 | Color Amazonia, Eafit, Medellín, Colombia.
2013 | Color Amazonia, FLORA ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia.
2003 | El Paraíso Perdido, Galería de la Oficina, Medellín, Colombia.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019 | Humboldt: Traspasar el mito, Centro Cultural Metropolitano (MET), Quito.
2019 | Proyecto Arte Vivo, Artesanías de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.
2018 | Cosmogonies, au gré des éléments, MAMAC, Nice, France.
2018 | An exhibition with art installations by Susana Mejía, Pamela Rosenkranz, and Anicka Yi,
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
2017 | Galerie Les filles du calvaire, Paris, France.
2017 | Coloquio Arte no Objetual, MAMM, Medellín, Colombia.
2015 | Once Again, Galería de la Oficina, Medellín, Colombia.
2015 | Biennale Internationale du Lin de Portneuf, Québec, Canada.
2015 | Waterweavers, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., USA.
2015 | Waterweavers, Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain.
2014 | Waterweavers, Bard Graduate Center, New York, USA.
2013 | Gloria Dinero, Galería de la Oficina – Taller de Grabado La Estampa, Medellín, Colombia.
2005 | Exvoto, Galería de la Oficina, Medellín, Colombia.
2004 | Siete Artistas, Quinta Galería, Cartagena, Colombia.
2003 | Aproximaciones a lo pictórico, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango – Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia.
2003 | Cuatro Artistas, Sala de Arte Suramericana de Seguros, Medellín, Colombia.

COLOR WORKSHOPS
2018 | Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
2017 | II Coloquio de Arte no Objetual, MAMM, Medellín, Colombia.
2016 | Color workshop, FLORA ars+natura, Honda, Colombia.
2015 | La ciudad de los niños, MAMM, Medellín, Colombia.
2013 | La universidad de los niños, EAFIT, Medellín, Colombia.

PUBLICATIONS
2018 | Cosmogonies, au gré des éléments, MAMAC, Nice, France.
ISBN: 978-9-46161-473-5
2015 | Subjective Atlas of Colombia, Semana Libros, Bogotá, Colombia.
ISBN: 978-958-58987-7-6
2015 | Floræ, #1 – Florestanía, FLORA ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia.
ISSN: 2462-9324
2014 | Waterweavers: A Chronicle of Rivers, BGC, New York, NY.
ISBN: 978-0-9824680-1-2
2013 | Color Amazonia, Mesa Editores, Medellín, Colombia.
ISBN: 978-958-46-1636-4