GABRIELA PINILLA REVISITS THE HISTORY OF THE MARGINS

La Cometa, Madrid, presents Escuela de La Belleza, a solo exhibition by Gabriela Pinilla (Bogotá, Colombia, 1983) that brings together a body of work centered on artistic research and historiography from multiple perspectives. Her practice addresses political and social events alongside experiences rooted in the personal sphere and the arts. Pinilla employs a range of languages and media to develop a methodology grounded in rigorous research into historical sources.

For this project, her focus shifts toward the Colombian countryside, recovering experiences, landscapes, and memories associated with childhood and education. The figure of Luis, a child who travels the same route to school every day in Santander, becomes the starting point for exploring the relationship between community, territory, and nature.

Through a variety of artistic strategies, Pinilla transforms this everyday story into a broader reflection on memory and the ways in which it is transmitted. Drawing on historical archives, newspaper clippings, and other documentary materials, she reinterprets events connected to the sociopolitical history of Colombia and Latin America during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Through this examination of narratives marginalized by official historiography, Pinilla critically analyzes traditional forms of constructing accounts of the past. Her practice can also be understood as a series of projects that appropriate the functions of small-scale archival and even museological spaces, publishing and bringing visibility to stories that have remained outside the boundaries of public knowledge.

Gabriela Pinilla: Escuela de La Belleza is on view through October 31 at La Cometa, San Lorenzo 11, Madrid, Spain.