5 Questions with Camilo Leyva
Artist and art historian Camilo Leyva considers how the practices of artists in the 1960s opened up many paths for contemporary artists in Colombia today.
Camilo Leyva
Professor, Artist, Curator
University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano
Camilo Leyva is a multidisciplinary artist that lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. He is part-time professor at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá where he teaches sculpture studio courses. Currently he also works at the National Center for Historical Memory (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica) specifically at the National Museum of Memory to define its Digital Ecosystem and its Collections Policy. Leyva also has the habit of making installations and sculptures that focus on how a sign (or semiotic structure) can be constructed and communicated within the conventions of matter. He thinks about how memory and stories stay latent within matter and context, how those memories can be articulated into or revealed through a material statement. He wants to understand the process of communication and proposes a collective construction of meaning through his work that is at present participatory in nature. Leyva received an MFA at Parsons the New School for Design; he has shown his work in group exhibitions in New York and Bogotá. He has two large scale solo projects. The first one titled Machine was installed at Espacio Odeón on May 2014 and The promise of disorganization, the second project, was shown at the Chamber of Commerce in Bogotá 2014 through 2015. In 2016, he was admitted to the summer artist residency of Skowhegen whose alumni include Nancy Graves, Alex Katz, and Ellsworth Kelly.