Yulia Galvis Alzate
Colombia
Biography
Master of Fine Arts, Costume Designer, and Interdisciplinary Master’s in Theater and Performing Arts from the National University of Colombia. My artistic work stems from the simultaneity between the theoretical/conceptual and the reflective, exploring the ways in which the body inhabits physical and mental processes through an existential and philosophical inquiry, in which performance, photography, video art, creative writing, installation, and drawing are central. This interest unfolds through concepts such as weight, gravity, and lightness to explore memories, ways of inhabiting, and physical and mental burdens.
I have participated in group exhibitions such as “Artistic Convergences: Algorithms on Stage” at the Rionegro Art Museum (MAR) in 2019; the 4th International Photography Exhibition “Vanishing Points” at the University of Antioquia/Faculty of Arts, CreaLab, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the Bellas Artes University Foundation in 2021; the “TESIS Project” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bogotá and UNIMINUTO in 2021; the “Together We Create” visual and plastic arts exhibition at the Rionegro Art Museum (MAR) in 2021; the 6th International Photography Exhibition “Ausencia” at the University of Antioquia/Faculty of Arts, CreaLab, and Área 301 in 2023; the Rionegro Cultural City 2024 Exhibition with the project “Disparity: What Weighs Heavier?”; and the exhibition “From the Jungle to the Andes” at FotoFest Colombia 2025.
Project
Disparidad: ¿Qué más pesa? is my latest project. It stems from a deep need to generate questions and premises that stimulate our critical thinking through art, prompting us to reflect on the weight of the intangible, reflection, the ways we experience our bodies, the territory we inhabit, and the experiences, histories, and stories we carry with us that weigh us down.
The project incorporates interdisciplinary elements through performative, pedagogical, and visual components. Photography—both digital and analog—becomes a language for narrating the visible and invisible traces of the mental and physical weight that many bodies bear. At the same time, it becomes experiential and collaborative, building on several preceding lines of action, such as a body movement laboratory with creative writing and experimental practices, where sensing the body from other perspectives—fluids, bones, reflexes, organs, skin, and light and heavy materials—served as a guide to experiencing the body beyond the exterior and focusing energy on the interior.
Disparity: What Weighs Heavier? is my latest project. It stems from a deep need to generate questions and premises that stimulate our critical thinking through art, prompting us to reflect on the weight of the intangible, reflection, the ways we experience our bodies, the territory we inhabit, and the experiences, histories, and stories we carry with us that weigh us down.
The project incorporates interdisciplinary elements through performative, pedagogical, and visual components. Photography—both digital and analog—becomes a language for narrating the visible and invisible traces of the mental and physical weight that many bodies bear. At the same time, it becomes experiential and collaborative, building on several preceding lines of action, such as a body movement laboratory with creative writing and experimental practices, where sensing the body from other perspectives—fluids, bones, reflexes, organs, skin, and light and heavy materials—served as a guide to experiencing the body beyond the exterior and focusing energy on the interior.
Thus, Disparity: What Weighs Heavier? emerges as an initiative that proposes a conversation about the relationship between the body, territory, mental well-being, and materials—ropes, pulleys, fabrics, stones—to address themes related to the way we inhabit; in this case, the way we inhabit our bodies within a social, cultural, and political context where appearance prevails and the weight of emptiness intensifies.
Statement
My artistic practice draws on the interplay between the theoretical, conceptual, and reflective to generate different premises. This process, which coexists simultaneously and is linked to personal experience, converges in an interest in the body in action, which I conceive as an expanded device regulated by social, economic, and cultural factors. In turn, I explore its relationship with living space, which in some cases is denied by the various dynamics of the environment resulting from population growth, displacement, forced and voluntary migration, and even by mental barriers created by ourselves—who stereotype the body—where it is important to address concepts such as weight, gravity, and lightness to explore memories, as well as physical and mental burdens.
Thus, it is vital in my work to employ dialogic processes grounded in experimental pedagogies, where people can create and reflect through relationships and connections with others and their environments. Performance, photography, video art, creative writing, installation, and drawing are central to my practice; consequently, my recent projects have an interdisciplinary focus that fuses diverse artistic languages.
