Bag Factory Artists’ Studios & the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Knowledges, Republic of Colombia supported by Teatro 101, are pleased to showcase the presentation by our latest visiting Artist in Residence, entitled:

In the Darkness,

Black Becomes Power

Laura Campaz

12 December 2024 – 15 January 2025

Opening/Event Presentation: Thursday, 12^th December 2024, 5 pm- 7 pm  

Darkness, like Glissant’s opacity^[1], is both a refuge and resistance. It is a space where the visible fragments, where contours dissolve, and the power of black emerges in its deepest strength. This project explores the tension between what is hidden and what is revealed, between opacity that preserves and transparency that exposes.

In the selection of artworks presented, individuals’ clothing become the protagonist. In the dim light, the absence of the body is not a void, but a declaration: a challenge to the expectations of total visibility. Here, opacity does not seek to be understood or translated; it demands to be respected in its mystery, in the richness of what is not fully shown. For queer identities, opacity is vital: it protects and owns the spaces they occupy, resists pigeonholing, and the normative. It is a political and poetic gesture that affirms the right to exist without being completely unravelled.

The transparency of the fabrics used in the artworks presented - photographs and collages  - create a poetic layering that interacts with one another. This layering does not seek clarity, but depth: it forces the gaze to move, to reconstruct, to accept the impossibility of a wholistic view. Transparency here does not illuminate but multiplies possibilities, evoking that identity, like the image, is not exhausted in a single layer, but affirms the importance of complexity.

In The Darkness, Black Becomes Power challenges the historical negative connotations associated with both the colour black and darkness. Instead of representing them as absence, danger, or void, this project reimagines them as symbols of strength, depth, and resistance and  shows that black and darkness not only enclose mystery, but also carry beauty, richness, and power.

In this act, black is elevated as affirmation, as a space where what has been misunderstood can find its place as a new form of light ... black light.

Central to Campaz’s practice is the exploration of the history and culture of Afro descendants,  through the application of cyberethnography, exploring digital archives, internet symbols, and temporary files. Using techniques like collage, video, photography, and installation, her work sheds light on the intersections of race, ancestry, and territory.

Laura's oeuvre invites us to reimagine Afro-Colombian history through virtual archives and netnography, and the approach the artists takes is to merges digital media with ritualistic and anthropological research, connecting us to a heritage rooted in nature, history, and transformation.