Natalia Escobar

About

Natalia Escobar is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans moving images, sound, performance, and installations. Her work explores Andean phenomenology, Indigenous cosmovisions, identity, and memory, drawing from decolonial and intersectional feminist perspectives. She studied Fine Art at The Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums such as Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, CCD in Mexico City, La Casa Encendida in Madrid, La Cinemateca, and the National Museum in Bogotá. She has also participated in artist residencies at international institutions such as LABVERDE, Paso de Fauna, and AKI AORA. Since 2021, Escobar has been developing pedagogical projects and collaborations with different Indigenous communities in South America, notably with Las Traviesas, a community of trans-Indigenous women from the Embera people in Colombia. Together, they have developed initiatives that promote social and ecological transformation through artistic processes, emphasizing transdisciplinary collaboration as a strategy to challenge colonial norms and reimagine alternative realities and spaces for knowledge exchange. One of the projects developed with Las Traviesas, AWERA, queers colonial constructions of identity, exploring possibilities of womanhood beyond cisgender categories, and emphasizes unexpected collaborations that transcend conventional genealogical and ethnocentric relationships. An extension of this was the short film ‘ARIBADA’, which received international acclaim. It premiered at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, where it was nominated for the Queer Palm, and was featured at festivals such as Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival (FICCI), BFI London Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival at The Lincoln Center. Awards include the Emerging Talent Award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2022), the Norman Award at Stuttgarter Filmwinter (2023), and Winner, Best National Short Film at FICCALI. In addition to her visual work, Escobar channels her musical output as Poison Arrow and in the multisensory project Pierce with Arrow alongside Troy Pierce. Her Poison Arrow EP, If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Cut Your Face), was released on dBridge’s Pleasure District, reflecting themes in Colombian Carrilera music—love, loss, and crimes of passion. In 2021, Pierce with Arrow released their first LP Shatter on Dais Records, accompanied by an incense paper in collaboration with Hako and Folie à Plusieurs. She has performed at events and venues such as Berghain, Watergate, Video Club, Kiez Salon, Analogue Foundation, Madeira Dig, She Makes Noise, and Schinkel Pavillon, amongst others. Her latest sound and performative project, KOAXULA, created with Daniela Huerta, reimagines and decolonizes feminine archetypes through mythological narratives that bridge past, present, and future. They have performed at the CCD, MUTEK MX, Neue Nationagalerie, and Silent Green. Escobar’s expansive practice explores how future legacies can be laid. By unlocking new and needed levels of collective care, her work taps into an ecological era of creative consciousness, playing out along colonial lines. For Escobar, the world's complex web of entangled histories are not merely acknowledged but transformed.