Sin Cielo (Skyless), 2017  

video wall  

11:22 mins 

Courtesy the artist

Along with Treno (2007) and Río por asalto (river by assault) (2018), Sin Cielo (skyless) (2017) is part of a trilogy of immersive video and sound installations created by Clemencia Echeverri around the rivers in her native Colombia. In many remote rural places in the country, rivers and creeks are still the main or only means of access and transportation. With the armed conflict that has plagued the country for half a century, they have become mass graves, as the bodies of combatants are routinely thrown into the waters. They have been polluted and neglected, becoming corpses themselves, as industrial refuse is routinely dumped in the river, affecting entire communities as the dead(ly)waters flow downward. 

Skyless is a nine-part video installation about the Marmato gold mine in Colombia, which has been exploited uninterruptedly for centuries. The video alternates aerial views of the mine and the nearby Cauca river with close-ups of the extraction process, focusing on how the processed ore and chemicals such as cyanide and mercury are thrown into the river creating a deadly sludge that poisons everything in its wake. 

In Echeverri’s words, [this is a] “poisoned, toxic and forgotten zone… It is a ‘moral ruin’ that has profound effects on the political, social and ideological dimension of the territory.” 

This work was originally commissioned by the Banco de la República as a permanent installation in Manizales, Colombia.