Image: Medellín Museum of Modern Art, Medellin
Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s ‘Los años de la piedra’ is presented in Sala B, Sala C and the central nave.
The exhibition proposes a descent into a territory where domestic life and geology overlap, drawing on the sloping geography of Antioquia and the industrial heritage of the MAMM building, formerly a steelworks born from coal mining.
Its underground is treated not only as physical depth but also as a spiritual and dreamlike dimension: everyday spaces and objects—including stairs, a glass, a tree and the ground—are made strange through the figure of the spectral mule, a being from the region’s muleteering tradition that moves between labor and horror, and between surface and depth.
Sound forms a central architecture of the exhibition, drawing on melodies by Bonifacio Bautista and Víctor Jara to reveal the inner vibration of materials; in this dreamlike field, objects breathe, struggle against gravity and remain suspended in an ambiguous vitality where the distinction between living and dead dissolves.
Rather than seeking a future moral in response to ecological urgency, Gómez-Egaña asks what kinds of beings people choose to be today and how they relate to the animals, minerals and roots with which they share the world.
The exhibition also brings together coal and water, confronting viewers with the monstrosities and beauties with which they coexist.
Born in Colombia, Gómez-Egaña lives and works in Oslo; he studied visual art, performance and musical composition in London and Bergen, and his practice draws on geological transformation, algorithmic immediacy, media saturation and the culture of constant work.
