Set in the coast and desert of La Guajira, a region located in the Caribbean on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, a Wayuu artist invites a queer artist to create an art piece that goes beyond their identities. The installation they create together intertwines body, dance, and territory. In the process, oral memory is revealed through images that merge the fantastic and the futuristic with documentary and performative elements. This installation integrates video and ancestral techniques of Wayuu weaving, transforming the Chinchorro (Wayuu hammock) and fique fiber into visual canvases.

Background

The installation combines video and traditional weaving techniques of the Wayuu, transforming the Chinchorro (a Wayuu hammock) and the Fique fiber into visual canvases. The goal of the installation is to decolonize cinema and liberate it from conventional projections on screens. By challenging traditional formats, the image is reinterpreted by projecting it onto symbolic surfaces, such as the traditional Wayuu Chinchorro and Fique. This allows the colonial image to break free from hegemonic viewpoints and escape the confines of a two-dimensional format. This rupture with familiar texture is not only aesthetic but also an act of cultural resilience that invites new ways of seeing and experiencing cinema, deeply rooted in identity, utopia, territory, and Indigenous and queer memory.

Traditional narrative techniques, such as weaving, are thus connected with contemporary forms of storytelling, like video, critically questioning the binary separation of craftsmanship and art. The work is intended not only to be viewed but also to be experienced directly from within the Chinchorro while lying down; for this reason, the audience is invited to recline in the Chinchorro.

Selection of Festivals, Exhibitions & Awards

Shedhalle Zurich, ProtoZone16: Hallucinogenesis

Credits

Artistic Directors: ELIZABETH PIRELA & SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Produced by: MAIITUI FILMS – ELIZABETH PIRELA & ATELIER LAPAETAU – LAURA PAETAU & SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Coproduced by: WELTFILM – KRISTINA KONRAD | Director of Photography: ELIZABETH PIRELA | Performed by: SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Art Director: CHRISTIAN KÜLLMEI | Costume Design: MOISÉS ACOSTA, CHRISTIAN Küllmei, ELIZABETH PIRELA, SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Dramaturgy: LAURA PAETAU | Field Producer: NESTOR URIANA | 1st Assistant Camera: JARLEN  HERRERA URIANA | Production Assistants: LUIS HERRERA URIANA, IMANOL CORONADO ARPUSHANA | Still Photography: JAIRO SIJUNA IPUANA |  Editing: ELIZABETH PIRELA & SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Sound Design: RUBÉN VALDES | Music: EL LEÓN DEL SOL BY ROYAL DUST FEAT. AÉREA NEGROT | Post-Production & Color Grading: MARTIN BACKHAUS | Design Flyer: CAMILO ACOSTA | Distribution: LUCIA GONZÁLEZ GARCÍA

With the kind support of Weltfilm – Kristina Konrad, Shedhalle, Südkulturfonds, the Ilse-Augustin-Stiftung & the Department of Culture and Social Cohesion of the Senate of Berlin.