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Sacred Lagoons

Series of acrylic and oil paintings on canvas

Sacred Lagoons is a series of paintings that emerges from my connection to the territory of Bogotá and from an interest in exploring the mythology and worldview of the Muisca people, the ancestral inhabitants of this region. The series also stems from the convergence of my practice as a painter with my passion for hiking, particularly through the journeys I have made to some of the lagoons considered sacred within Muisca tradition.

Experiencing these landscapes through walking, silence, and contemplation gave them an almost mystical dimension for me. Being in front of these lagoons and moving through their surroundings led me to imagine how these spaces might have been inhabited by the Muisca during their ceremonies and rituals. I am particularly interested in the ceremonial rafts that allowed them to travel toward the center of the lagoons to perform offerings and rituals, a practice also connected to stories such as the legend of El Dorado.

This image of the raft also connects with a recurring element in my own practice: the idea of a platform or surface that functions as a refuge. In different works, these refuges have taken the form of an inflatable pool, a rug, or even a concrete platform. They are spaces that allow one to temporarily withdraw from the surrounding world, remain suspended, and create a place of one’s own for rest, contemplation, or solitude.

In Sacred Lagoons, this idea encounters the Muisca tradition. My characters appear immersed in majestic landscapes while simultaneously isolated within them, deliberately seeking a form of solitude that is not necessarily negative, but chosen: a space for silence, contemplation, and connection with oneself. The paintings thus imagine these landscapes as places of refuge and ritual, where stepping away from everyday life can become a contemporary form of introspection and healing.

The series proposes an encounter between territory, memory, imagination, and personal experience. Through painting, I reinterpret these landscapes and the rituals that once inhabited them, imagining what it might mean to occupy the center of a lagoon, surrounded by landscape and silence, and to recover a more contemplative relationship with the body, the environment, and oneself.