A Flower and a Thousand Paths is an exploration of ethnographies of the “other” and alternative networks of communication. The exhibition brings together practices that navigate different identities, and new ways of constructing narratives, through the work of 3 Colombian artist collectives: House of Tupamaras and Mutante based in Bogota and Elsgüer Studio based in Montréal.

Elsgüer Studio presents 3Lix, which explores layered connections of femme bodies through generational trauma. This project invites viewers to engage with a textile video performance being altered live by the wind being captured through an anemometer. Elsgüer’s other piece, Patterns of Plasticity, is a video installation presenting a series of images of neural activity, along with 3D scans and footage of flowers and pathways captured in Canada and Colombia. This project explores oral history and language as an extension of identity, by reconstructing a journey of recovery based on community support and neuro-plasticity. Mutante’s Queer Forms of Life and Bi0film.net, explore how independent and distributed communication networks are at the core of self-organized communities, such as bacteria, which communicate and collectively act. This project includes blueprints and a video about a parabolic WIFI umbrella antenna that can extend the signal range for a mobile phone. House of Tupamaras’ video installation, Failure is my Style, presents a utopic vision of queerness, while using broken text to question the self within structures of dissidence. This project celebrates empowerment through failure, adaptation, movement, and our connection with others.

A Flower and a Thousand Paths gives space to practices that are centered at the idea of community, collaboration, media experimentation, and postcolonial approaches to art making and presentation. As a video installation exhibition, A Flower and a Thousand Paths transforms Céline Bureau to present narratives of defiance and hope. 

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This exhibition was curated by Santiago Tavera.