Los Camargo, 1978 (Communion 1) Painting

Natalia Palacino Camargo is an interdisciplinary artist from Bogotá D.C. based in Los Angeles whose practice spans works in video, performance, painting, and textile work. She is interested in pushing the boundaries of the body and how it is impacted by the cultural and environmental landscape of Colombia — positioned within its longstanding violent internal conflict and conservative chauvinist culture. Through her work, Palacino explores the deeper relationships between body politics and the contradictory nature of the Anthropocene in denaturalizing the body. Her artwork centers on the experience of marginalized bodies and the immigration from rural landscapes to urban cities. The exposure and desensitization of death in war-torn contexts like her own, informs Palacino's work on how the body and nature are intertwined through the life cycle. Honoring the victims of the internal conflict in Colombia — beyond her focus on how violence affects female and queer bodies —she explores the manifestation of the self across time, nature and color. Turning a critical lens on her experience in living between two spaces she explores the contrast between the maximalism of consumerist culture in the USA and the rich biodiversity yet lack of infrastructure in Colombia. Palacino holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Art Professions with honors in Philosophy.