Valentina Soto-Ruiz

Spreads of the artist book La maleza + Enlarge
La maleza 03 2020 Artist book
Spreads of the artist book La maleza + Enlarge
La maleza 01 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 02 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 04 2020 Artist book
Spreads of the artist book La maleza + Enlarge
La maleza 05 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 06 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 07 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 08 2020 Artist book
Spreads of the artist book La maleza + Enlarge
La maleza 09 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 10 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 12 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 11 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 14 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 15 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 13 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 16 2020 Artist book
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La maleza 17 2020 Artist book
Statement

La maleza started as an exploration of 'origin' and the essence of environmental, geographical, and psychological notions of home. But along the way, I conceived a tale of remembrance, acknowledgment, and healing.

Through La maleza, I continue to examine and deconstruct concepts of place and coloniality of power in response to a 'Colombianness,' aided by neoliberalism and colonization, which seeks to unify under one national identity while upholding white supremacy and continuously disenfranchising Black and Indigenous communities.

One of two daughters from a middle-class family in Colombia, I was brought up in Medellín, an extremely homogeneous city established over the ancestral lands of the Aburrae and all Emberá Peoples, where 9 out of 10 people are white or mestizo. In Colombia, lived experiences denote ethnicity, unlike the United States, which is based on family ancestry. The embodiment of Western hegemony and globalization in Colombia are the building blocks of my contextualized existence as a white Latinx immigrant in the United States. I aim to offer a recollection, the pieces of my life and presence in the neo-colonized Colombian society.

La maleza exists in the interim of the cultural imaginary and the fabric of ‘re-semioticised’ memories. As a transplant from Medellín living in Maryland, the Piscataway and Algonquian Peoples' ancestral lands, I'm exploring my transmuted realities of culture and identity through the restoration of my relationship with the land I was born into and its destructive colonial legacy.

Photography (BFA) Students