Para la Coca, 2 channel installation, 13 mins.
Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Danko Stjepanovic — Para la Coca, 2 channel installation, 13 mins. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Danko Stjepanovic

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Para la Coca

2 channel installation on a curved wall
14 mins | 2023 | 2K | Stereo
Spanish| English, French, Arab Subtitles
Co-authored with Cristobal Gomez Abel

Para la Coca is an audiovisual installation around the coca plant (Erythroxylum coca), a plant stigmatized and criminalized since the colonization of the Americas. This work is co-authored with Cristobal Gomez Abel, who is part of the Bora and Murui Colombian First Nations, and is the result of a conversation between the two authors for the past ten years. At the initiative of Cristobal, this work revisits a Murui myth of origin, which equals an ancestral law that teaches us about the ethics that the coca plant use implies. In this myth, the plant is a person, a deity embodying the form of a girl who teaches her father and community the “right use” of the plant. This work shares this message to advocate for the decriminalisation of the plant.

This work has been accompanied by Nelly Kuiru, the founder and director of the Amazonia school Escuela de Comunicación Indígena Amazonía Ka+ Jana Uai (La voz de nuestra imagen). We acknowledge her influencial role in the production and writing of this film and acknowledge as well the permission granted by Cristobal Gomez Abel and his community to spread the teachings of the coca through the form of this myth.

Based on Jibina Marena Uay – Coca de la Buena Palabra, an ongoing script written by Cristobal Gomez Abel (Murui/Bora) and Laura Huertas Millan.

We acknowledge that the ancestral myth of origin of the coca plant belongs to the Murui nation. We thank them for allowing our interpretation with the purpose of de-stigmatizing the coca plant and psychotropics, as well as honoring and amplifying ancestral indigenous political, cultural and spiritual resistance in Colombia.

With
Cristobal Gomez Abel, Pedro Armando Sopin Morales, Harold Jeferson Gomez Florez, Gilber Olmedo Morales, Dewins Nicolas Gomez Florez, Didier Libardo Santana Gaspar, Carmen Sofia Gaspar Florez, Libardo Santana Florez, Diana Valentina Cuellar Gomez, Cristian Gomez Florez, Alina Santana Gaspar.

Recorded in
the Muiri Muina community,
Nimaira Náimeke ibike, Patio de Ciencia Dulce

Directed and produced by
Laura Huertas Millán

Creative and production consultant
Nelly Kuiru

DoP
Mauricio Reyes, Laura Huertas Millan

Sound recording
Laura Huertas Millan, Grégory Castéra, Angel Maria Fajardo

With the support of
PinchukArtCenter, Liverpool Biennial, CNAP (Centre National des arts plastiques), Institut Français (Résidence+), Mondes Nouveaux (Ministère de la culture).

Laura Huertas Millán. Let My People Go, 2019
5 channel audio-visual installation, 6’00”. Recorded in the Muina Murui, Nɨmaira Nàɨmeke ɨbɨke community (Colombian Amazon). With: Cristobal Gomez Abel, Pedro Armando Sopín Morales, Harold Jeferson Gómez — Laura Huertas Millán. Let My People Go, 2019 5 channel audio-visual installation, 6’00”. Recorded in the Muina Murui, Nɨmaira Nàɨmeke ɨbɨke community (Colombian Amazon). With: Cristobal Gomez Abel, Pedro Armando Sopín Morales, Harold Jeferson Gómez Florez, Gilber Olmedo Morales Special thanks: Cabildo indígena Comunidad km 11 Muina Murui, Aura Torres Farina Tofe, Carmen Sofía Gaspar Florez, Libardo Santana Florez, Marie Darel, Jerome Dopffer, Simón Velez, Juan Alvaro Echeverri, Hipólito Candre Produced by Studio Arturo Lucia Co-produced by PinchukArtCentre and Centre national des arts plastiques

Let My People Go

5 channel audio-visual installation, 6’00”.

Let My People Go is an expanded cinema piece presented as a five-channel installation. The main character of the narrative is the coca plant, which in the Colombian Amazon is the highest sacred entity for the Muina-Muruí indigenous community, and it is venerated as a feminine being source of power and wisdom. Huertas Millán new immersive work plunges us into the ritualistic elaboration of the mambe, the green powder used for its worship. By representing an emancipatory use of this psychotropic substance, far from the mainstream stereotypes of cocaïne and violence, Let my people go stages an embodied dialogue with a natural being.

Recorded in the Muina Murui, Nɨmaira Nàɨmeke ɨbɨke community (Colombian Amazon).

With: Cristobal Gomez Abel, Pedro Armando Sopín Morales, Harold Jeferson Gómez Florez, Gilber Olmedo Morales Special thanks: Cabildo indígena Comunidad km 11 Muina Murui, Aura Torres Farina Tofe, Carmen Sofía Gaspar Florez, Libardo Santana Florez, Marie Darel, Jerome Dopffer, Simón Velez, Juan Alvaro Echeverri, Hipólito Candre

Produced by Studio Arturo Lucia

Co-produced by PinchukArtCentre and Centre national des arts plastiques

Directed and produced by
Laura Huertas Millán

With the support of
PinchukArtCenter, Liverpool Biennial, CNAP (Centre National des arts plastiques), Institut Français (Résidence+), Mondes Nouveaux (Ministère de la culture).