Advisor/tutor: Ana Teixeira Pinto

August 2020

Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to narrate a form of relationship that undergirds what in Colombia is known as the guacas, something that I would describe as a communication event. It does so through the work of artist Juan Diaz and his engagement with the notion of the guaca. It is a study of unspoken forms of thought that resist modernity while moving along with it. However a paradoxical proposal, these practices bear the faculty of being various things and concepts at the same time, responding also to different temporalities. More than an interpretation model, “Thus Spoke the Guaca” is focused on the political and social diapositives and the particular socio-economic conditions that fostered both Juan Diaz’s work and the communication events of guacas.