Somatic Choreographies: Photography Program course hosts exhibition in collaboration with Bogota, Colombia university April 24

SUNY New Paltz’s Photography Program is excited to announce the opening of “Somatic Choreographies: Spaces of encounter between art, community and territory,” a collaborative effort between students in the Image in Context and Digital Video courses and students from the University of Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano (UTADEO) in Bogota, Columbia. The collaboration was conceived and organized by artists and educators Óscar Moreno Escárraga from UTADEO and New Paltz Associate Professor Andrea Frank. 

The opening reception will be held on Thursday, April 24 at the Fine Arts Building from 1:30 – 3 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.   

“I am touched by the courage and depth of embodied connection and discovery the students in both locations were able to channel into their artworks and words while working within a very short timeframe,” said Frank. “I am immensely grateful and look forward to deepening this collaboration in the future. It has highlighted a strong desire and need for embodied connection with the land, with our ancestors, and with each other as we create meaning through art.” 

This exhibition juxtaposes photographic and video pieces by students from UTADEO with work by SUNY New Paltz students, which they developed in response to the respective creative and somatic provocations from Bogota. It also includes some work by community members who creatively responded to our collective process.   

The project was born out of the desire to open pathways across divisions and separations—between South and North, Indigenous and Western communities, between young and old—and to immerse ourselves in deeper listening and connection to the Earth and resulted in exhibitions, presentations, performances, talking circles and collaborative engagements.    

Somatic Choreographies is co-hosted by the Department of Art at SUNY New Paltz and UTADEO University, along with the Unison Arts Center, Glasshouse Project, Proyecto Binario, Collective Werebere and the Observatory for Social Poetics. 

Click here to learn more about the Photography Program at SUNY New Paltz.