Caño Cristales through Ivan Mikolji’s photography
Explorer and artist Ivan Mikolji made a photographic portfolio of Caño Cristales, in the mountains of La Macarena, department of Meta, Colombia. This exhibition is a selection of this hidden place in Colombia, where water becomes a rainbow among rich biodiversity; a natural and biological reserve of humanity. An intense source visitors from Colombia, South America and different continents, in 2016 Caño Cristales had more than 16,000 tourists.
Eduardo Planchart Licea
PhD. History of Latin American Art, UNAM
Curatorial Text
Caño Cristales through Ivan Mikolji’s photography
Explorer and artist Ivan Mikolji made a photographic portfolio of Caño Cristales, in the mountains of La Macarena, department of Meta, Colombia. This sampling is a selection of this hidden place in Colombia, where water becomes a rainbow among rich biodiversity; a natural and biological reserve of humanity. An intense source visitors from Colombia, South America and different continents, in 2016 Caño Cristales had more than 16,000 tourists.
Through the sensitivity of Mikolji, in his aquatic and underwater photographs, the viewer is confronted with a sublime, paradisical reality that reveals an unknown place on our continent. The photographer goes beyond documentary. Nature, science and art merge into one dimension in each of these images.
With more than a hundred expeditions and innumerable international publications, Mikolji has demonstrated the authenticity and originality of his artistic passion. The philosophy that moves his creative will is the urgency to preserve the aquatic ecosystems of the planet, and as a first step he considers it necessary to make known the wealth and beauty of these universes. That is why he would say: “you cannot preserve something that you don’t know exists.” And to that work he has devoted a large part of his life, as he proves in the following documentaries.
Mikolji Photographer of the Orinoquía: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVnDaLwxvn4
Caño Cristales and its biodiversity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ0y7mKkVc4&t=218s
Fusion between Nature, Science and Art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQFpF7YIGkQ&t=4s
Book “Fauna de Caño Cristales, Sierra de La Macarena, Meta, Colombia” 2017
This photographic exhibition, together with multidisciplinary and participatory research, has materialized in the book “Fauna of Caño Cristales, Sierra de La Macarena, Meta, Colombia” 2017. Among its pages are the detailed images and the results of the investigations of this vital universe, where the life that beats in these rivers is revealed in approaches and compositions that turn this photographic sample into transcendent glances, that touch the sacred in the measure that new, foundational realities linked to the origins of the life of this blue planet are presented.
Eduardo Planchart Licea
PhD. Latin American Art History, UNAM
Thanks to: Corporación para el Desarrollo Sostenible del Área de Manejo Especial La Macarena-Cormacarena, el Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander Von Humboldt-IAvH el Ministerio del Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible de Colombia, Prof. Carlos A. Lasso Alcalá y la investigadora Mónica A. Morales-Betancourt del IAvH.