SANTUARIO

Additional workshops explored the intersections of creativity, tradition, and sustainable economies. A jewelry-making session led by designer Aysha Bilgrami invited participants to experiment with design, materials, and storytelling through beading — a practice deeply rooted in Embera culture. This exchange between artisanal knowledge and contemporary design encouraged Las Traviesas to envision creative economies that sustain both cultural continuity and autonomy.

Another workshop, developed in collaboration with Arte-Sano, the social enterprise of Crepes & Waffles, explored agribusiness and sustainable land practices. One of the long-term goals for Las Traviesas is to secure land for sustenance and economic independence. For this session, we invited a farming family — Martha Ángel and Harrison Vargas — who grow and commercialize arracacha in Cajamarca, Tolima. They shared their experience building a cooperative of local farmers, developing sustainable production models, and resisting extractivist industries. Their community famously led the 2017 popular consultation that stopped the establishment of what would have been Colombia’s largest open-pit gold mine — a landmark victory for collective land defense.

During the exhibition’s opening, Las Traviesas performed traditional Embera dances alongside Las Tupanas Amazónicas. For them, dance functions as ritual — a return to women’s spaces where dresses, headdresses, and gestures are crafted together. These acts of creation and movement embody resilience, memory, and the continuous transformation of identity.

More than an exhibition, AWERA en Bakatá was an act of collective affirmation. It revealed both the possibilities and contradictions of bringing rural, queer, and Indigenous worlds into the nation’s institutional center. Through their presence, Las Traviesas reimagined the museum not as a site of containment, but as a living territory for encounter, imagination, and care.

AWERA en Santuario

The premiere of Awera in Santuario was a moment of reciprocity and return — a gesture of gratitude toward the community and territory that have welcomed Las Traviesas, the Embera trans women’s collective, and, for the past two years, a group of Latin American and European artists who have accompanied them in this creative process.

Sharing the different creations of Awera — graphic and photographic works, traditional dances and performances, and the audiovisual pieces — took place in public spaces such as the cultural center and the town’s main square. These encounters helped to soften the social boundaries between the Embera people and the mestizo peasant population of Santuario, opening new forms of dialogue and recognition.

It was especially meaningful that Las Traviesas could exchange experiences with figures such as Nil Bailarín, an Embera Chamí trans woman and the first governor of an Indigenous reserve in Colombia; Ysaí Bueno, a gay Embera filmmaker; and Las Guapas, a collective of trans women sex workers who produce news and audiovisual communication from the streets of Manizales.

The premiere of Awera in Santuario was not only a showcase of everything accomplished over these two years, but also the beginning of a new chapter for what comes next for Las Traviesas. While the ancestral diversity of Indigenous communities in Santuario–Risaralda and Antioquia has gained greater visibility and agency in their struggle for rights and recognition, the situation of ancestral sexual and gender diversity at the national level remains fragile and concerning. We hope that these initiatives will continue to strengthen connections and generate resonances across other territories in Colombia.

     Jonathan Luna