Luis Carlos Tovar: Palonegro

The fruit of several years’ research between Colombia, Switzerland and France, “Palonegro” is being presented for the first time at the Centre de la photographie Genève. The project explores a specific chapter in the history of violence in Colombia, the Thousand Days’ War (1899-1902), including the bloody Battle of Palonegro (11-25 May 1900). This was the ninth and most important civil war in the country, whose entire history is marked by numerous episodes of violence.

Beyond this particular chapter in his country’s history, the artist’s research focuses on the writing of history, the memorialisation and transmission of the history of violence, and possible ways of healing the individual and collective traumas caused by political violence. It pays close attention to the narratives excluded from official national histories, and to the many voices that make them up. This work also highlights the important and little-known links between Switzerland and Colombia in the creation and preservation of Colombian history. His work also raises the questions of who is the repository of history, who writes it and for whom, and who has the capacity to reactivate it and make sense of it, with a view to appeasement, reconciliation and symbolic reparation.