Santiago Díaz Escamilla

nervio
Nerve

2020 - 2022

Collaborative exhibition with artist Liliana Sánchez, featuring co-created works alongside contributions by artists Luisa Ungar, Alex Rodríguez, David Peña, Luis Roldán, and Adolfo Bernal.

Anotaciones (Annotations), a series of five collaborative situations, each developed by a different invited participant: literary scholar Pablo Guarín Robledo; artists Nicolás Paris, Luisa Ungar, and David Peña; and curator Paula Bossa.

nervio (Nerve) builds on the collaboration between artists Liliana Sánchez and Santiago Díaz Escamilla that began in February 2020, when for the first time their work was displayed in our gallery space in an integrated manner under the title Ser, Dejar, Estar. Some shared interests and the shifting and latent aspect that characterizes the practice of both artists allowed them to develop a work that sought to destabilize the notion of the art object.

In addition, Sánchez and Díaz Escamilla put themselves to the task of creating a poster for the exhibition in the installations of Rélampago, a Bogotá-based print workshop, which resulted in the creation of a series of abstract linoleum prints. Mediated by the artists’ resistance to traditional graphic work so distant from their practice, Sánchez and Díaz Escamilla produced a series of prints that evidence the many trials and errors involved in the printing process.

Produced two years ago, the linoleum prints with amorphousforms that seem to accidentally float or slide out of the page, today are converted into conceptual and material destabilizers that made way for the creation of a highly experimental exhibition which in Sánchez's words: “puts forth a series of questions surrounding artistic creation, creativity and alternative ways of doing research that are often disregarded when one adheres to traditional ways of working.”

Far from presenting an exhibition based on an extensive research process with a set objective in mind, Sánchez and Díaz Escamilla conceived nervio as a “circuit of situations” or a total work of art that responds to the specific attributes of an architectural space and converses in an intuitive manner with works (or a lack thereof) by Luisa Ungar, Alex Rodríguez, David Peña, Luis Roldán, and Adolfo Bernal.

nervio is a think tank providing a non-traditional experience of an exhibition space. It articulates the notion of “collaboration” as one that surpasses the simple execution of a joint action. For Sánchez and Díaz Escamilla, collaboration is understood as “a presence that destabilizes the other” and one in which uncertainty lies implicit within. Albeit challenging, the collaboration between the artists after a two-year hiatus, brought along with it a renovated spirit of freedom that translated into a playing scenario marked by chance.

Paula Bossa

The descriptions accompanying the individual situations below are English translations of texts originally published in Spanish as event announcements by Casas Riegner.
Developed within the collaborative context of the series, the texts may reflect contributions from several of those involved; individual authorship is not specified in the original posts.

Anotaciones: Ensayo de archivo
(Annotations: An Archival Rehearsal)

Luisa Ungar with Liliana Sánchez and Santiago Díaz Escamilla
April 22, 2022

A shared reading of a script, a structure still fragile and unfinished:
Fragments of works left behind after a break-in at home,
attempts to reconstruct the stolen files, recent conversations, and a head injury:
Where does memory reside?

The invitation for Luisa Ungar to participate in the exhibition nervio
responds to a phenomenon of sorts, persistently approached
from several angles: the absence and activation of missing parts,
alongside notions of unity, identity, and meaning.

Anotaciones: Deshidratar ideas
(Annotations: Dehydrating Ideas)

Nicolás Paris
May 19, 2022

Without a central action, a plan to follow, or an outcome
to expect, Nicolás Paris proposes an exercise
whose most tangible element is the start of a conversation.
Possible paths or outcomes remain open to a group
that participates and acts unpredictably.
Learning in reverse. Advancing without trying to move forward.
Moving toward the center but not outward.
This gathering plays with things that are answers
and with answers whose beginnings and endings cannot be located.

For several years, Nicolás Paris and Santiago Díaz Escamilla
have carried on a conversation about ways of knowing,
learning, and experimenting.
Paris’s participation in nervio is an unknown
and therefore could not be more welcome.
The situation created by Liliana Sánchez and Santiago Díaz Escamilla
is occupied by a series of moments
that gradually shape the space itself
within a system of play, chance, and drift.

Anotaciones: La forma de la atención
(Annotations: The Form of Attention)

David Peña
June 9, 2022

This gathering begins by considering space
as an act of attention.
For a moment, it becomes possible to step outside the context,
bringing into focus and delimiting a fragment of a larger whole—
a fragment that takes on meaning for the observer.
David Peña’s proposed actions explore space through the point,
an entity Euclid defined, through exclusion and intuition,
as “that which has no part.”
“If a point merely marks a location,
is that where attention rests?”

Marionetas (Puppets), David Peña’s work, is a simple act
within a monumental undertaking, both hypnotic and overwhelming.
The invitation for Peña to participate in nervio
grew from a desire to understand the relationship
between gesture and the possibility of describing
the systems gradually traced through space.
The artist’s chosen method for constructing these graphs
is above all a commitment to experience;
perhaps this is also why one senses the fragility
of this incomplete body, trembling as it joins points
with its fingers.

Anotaciones: Voces y otros cuerpos intangibles
(Annotations: Voices and Other Intangible Bodies)

Pablo Guarín Robledo with Liliana Sánchez
May 12, 2022

The texts selected by Pablo Guarín Robledo
hold a body in suspension.
Within listeners’ minds, it comes together and comes undone.
Something takes shape. What it is, exactly, remains unknown.
Reading aloud. As in some churches or in bed before
falling asleep, before we decide we are too grown-up for a story.
Inhabiting the space. Beginning a conversation
with words that are not ours.
Words that start to become ours the moment we speak them,
even as they affect listeners differently, often with their eyes closed.

The encounter between nervio and Pablo’s literary practice
sharpens and reframes questions about how meaning is made,
the absent body, and the interplay between text and image.
His participation opens a conversation about representation
and its dimensions, power exercised through language,
and the dynamics of repression and censorship
that shape certain everyday spaces.
Joining those of Liliana Sánchez and Santiago Díaz Escamilla,
his questions probe the grammar at work
between the space and whoever inhabits it.

Anotaciones: Moderar lo imprevisto
(Annotations: Moderating the Unforeseen)

Paula Bossa with Pablo Guarín Robledo, Liliana Sánchez, and Santiago Díaz Escamilla
June 3, 2022

This time will be different. We decided to meet on Friday,
rather than on our usual Thursday.
That way, we preserve an air of celebration,
closure, conclusion, and finality for an exhibition
that nevertheless continues.
This is not a conversation. At least not in the strict sense.
Essentially, no one knows the questions or the answers.
Here, no one moderates, in part
because the exercise feels risky and unrestrained.
A leap into the void. Friday. Friday. Friday.

Reading aloud, yes, but above all a constellation of readings
in which chance plays a part.
No one knows beforehand what anyone else will read.
Perhaps the texts are the true moderators.

Anyone who wants to participate, with texts of their own
or by others, is more than welcome.
There is just one thing not to forget: Friday, Friday, Friday.
Oh, by the way: 5:30 p.m. at Casas Riegner.