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Artwork Description

In Tequendama Falls (2025), Evelyn Tovar continues her exploration of landscape as a historical, symbolic, and political construction. The work forms part of her Transitory Series, in which the artist reappropriates archival images—particularly early twentieth-century postcards and visual records—that helped establish a romanticized and monumental vision of Colombian territory. The image of Tequendama Falls, one of the country’s most widely reproduced and mythologized landscapes, is rendered through metallic leaf on yellow silkscreen. The motif appears partially dissolved, fragmented, and suspended within the chromatic field, emphasizing its condition as a mediated image rather than a direct depiction of place. The yellow background once again references El Dorado imaginaries and colonial narratives that framed these territories as sites of wealth, promise, and exploitation. The use of metallic leaf introduces a critical tension between symbolic permanence and material degradation. While gold evokes durability and value, the Tequendama Falls landscape has been profoundly impacted by pollution, urban expansion, and environmental decay. This contradiction highlights the gap between the idealized landscape circulated through historical imagery and the contemporary reality of the site. Rather than offering a nostalgic representation, Tequendama Falls reflects on the transformation of landscape into image, and on how certain sites are preserved within collective memory even as their material conditions erode. The work positions landscape as a surface of cultural projection, where memory, representation, and loss converge.