Marcos Ávila-Forero France / Colombia, b. 1983

Marcos Ávila-Forero typically works in challenging terrains or inaccessible places such as remote villages in rural Colombia. His practice is based on research that he conducts within communities and along with their residents, allowing him to bring to light experiences that remain beyond the reach of conventional communication. Instead of documenting the object of his research, Ávila-Forero immerses himself in the worlds he explores. He sees his role as that of an activist fighting for social issues he considers important, not just as an artist but as someone who uses art as simply one vehicle among others. 

In 2011 he travelled to the Amazon where he produced A Tarapoto -un manatí, he displayed said piece in the exhibition Le Vent d’Après and won the Prix Multimédia Des Fondations De Beaux-Arts. In 2012 he travelled to the Moroccan-Algerian border and worked with several clandestine immigrants to produce the video Cayuco - Una estela de Oujda a Melilla. In 2013; after receiving the Prix Découverte Du Palais de Tokyo, he travelled to Colombia and worked with communities displaced by the armed conflict, in a shanty town called Suratoque; with that name and in the name of the families he met, he produced a piece and an individual exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo. Later he received the Loop Award 2014. He travelled back to one of the epicentres of the armed conflict in Colombia in order to produce the project Atrato, that later would be exhibited in the Biennale di Venezia 2017 and acquired by the CNAP (National Centre for Visual Arts) in France. After working in 2019 with retired workers from the Japanese metallurgy industry, he created "Theory of the Flight of Wild Geese", which won the 21st Ricard Foundation Prize. He became the Vice-President of the organization "Citizenship for Peace" and, after three years of interviews with more than thirty social organizations throughout Colombian territory, he made "The Light of Bullets - The Darkness of Oblivion", a documentary about the armed conflict and peacebuilding. In 2020, his work "Suratoque" was included in the collection of the Centre Pompidou and was part of the exhibition "Global(e)-Resistance". Furthermore, his work is also present in the collections of CNAP, several FRAC, FMAC, Hermès Foundation, and MACBA, among other international public collections.