Silenciosa, Silenciada is a 20-minute experimental documentary. Revisiting my family's coffee farm and my grandfather's death, the film constructs a portrait of Chagas disease while tracing the replacement of coffee cultivation by export-oriented floral monocrops in the region.
Endemic to the Americas, the disease is transmitted by insects known as kissing bugs ("pitos"), whose habitat has expanded from 1,300 to 2,600 meters above sea level in recent years. The film develops a double narration: a personal history of illness and a territorial transformation shaped by shifting regimes of labor and extraction.
The project extends into two in-situ installations: a bouquet of Colombian flowers purchased in Montreal, and a coffee shop price list marked with the daily wage of a coffee farmer in Cachipay.
Silenciosa, Silenciada (2024) — Extrait (1:30)
The film is accompanied by two in-situ installations: a bouquet of Colombian flowers bought in a local flower shop in Montreal, and a coffee shop price list marked with the dollar values of the average daily wage of a coffee farmer in the region of Cachipay, Colombia.
These gestures bring the economic and territorial logic of the film into the exhibition space, connecting export flowers, coffee labor, family memory, and disease.
Silenciosa, Silenciada
Experimental documentary
20 min.
2024
Bouquet of Colombian flowers bought in Montreal
Coffee shop price list with daily wage values of coffee farmers in Cachipay
Winner of the IDARTES national artistic residencies call in plastic and visual arts
Screenings and exhibitions to be added.