Sin Cielo (Skyless)

Sin Cielo (Skyless) is part of a trilogy of immersive video and sound installations created by Clemencia Echeverri about the rivers in her native Colombia. In many remote rural places in the country, rivers and creeks are still the main or only means of access and transportation. As a result of the armed conflict that has plagued Colombia for half a century, they have become mass graves, the bodies of combatants routinely thrown into the waters. Waterways have been polluted and neglected, becoming corpses themselves, as industrial refuse is consistently dumped in the river, affecting entire communities as the dead(ly) waters flow downward.

Sin Cielo (Skyless) is a nine-part video installation about the Marmato gold mine in Colombia, which has been exploited for centuries. The video alternates aerial views of the mine and the nearby Cauca river with close-ups of the extraction process, focusing on how the processed ore and chemicals such as cyanide and mercury are thrown into the river, creating a deadly sludge that poisons everything in its wake.

In Echeverri’s words, '[this is a] poisoned, toxic and forgotten zone... It is a ‘moral ruin’ that has profound effects on the political, social and ideological dimension of the territory.'