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Artwork Description

In The Western Andes and the Cali River (2025), Evelyn Tovar continues her investigation into the visual construction of the Colombian Andean landscape, drawing from historical images that helped solidify idealized notions of territory. The work forms part of her Transitory Series, in which she reappropriates early twentieth-century graphic records—particularly postcards and widely circulated images—to examine how landscape became symbol, promise, and representation. The composition presents a broad view of the Western Andes and the Cali River, rendered through metallic leaf on yellow silkscreen. The precise and restrained line traces mountains, vegetation, and waterways without fully embracing naturalistic depiction, instead emphasizing the landscape’s condition as a mediated image. The yellow ground once again operates as a reference to El Dorado myths and to visual economies that framed the territory as a site of wealth, abundance, and extraction. The use of metallic leaf introduces a critical tension between symbolic permanence and material transformation. While gold evokes durability and value, the landscape it outlines has been profoundly altered by urban expansion, mining, and agricultural development. Through this contrast, Tovar highlights the distance between the historical image of the landscape and the territory as a changing, contested reality. Rather than offering a panoramic view, the work reflects on landscape as a cultural construction. The Western Andes and the Cali River invites reconsideration of how these territories have been observed, named, and ultimately replaced by their representations, foregrounding the relationship between memory, image, and the ongoing transformation of the Andean environment.