JULIAN LOPEZ FLOREZ
My artistic practice investigates presence as an ontological category in a world where images no longer guarantee truth and documents no longer function as proof. I work at the threshold between critique and spirituality, between technology and the body, between archive and respiration.
Over more than fifteen years, my research has shifted from documentary practice and critical communication toward what I describe as a poetics of embodiment: a mode of thinking in which matter does not illustrate ideas but thinks; in which the body does not represent identity but produces world; and in which form does not recall the past but insists on the present.
The archive was one of my first territories of conflict. Early on, I understood that images do not reflect reality but organize it; that every document is a political decision; and that visual truth is a construction sustained by habits, institutions, and technologies. Since then, my work has operated through a series of displacements: from document to counter-archive, from image to matter, from record to presence.
This displacement does not abandon critique—it embodies it. Suspicion toward the image becomes a question addressed to the body; the deconstruction of the archive turns into an exploration of form; and the crisis of truth leads to an investigation of vibration, mark, and breath as active principles of meaning.
The spirituality that runs through my practice does not respond to doctrinal systems or shamanic gestures. It manifests as a material condition of experience: in labor, in sweat, in migration, in formal repetition, in the persistence of certain geometries that survive their ritual contexts and reappear—transformed—within the digital present.
I work with photography, sculpture, painting, textile, modeling and 3D sculpture, and virtual environments not as separate media, but as states of a single organism. The figital condition of my work is not a technological strategy, but an ontological consequence: form must circulate across planes in order to remain alive.
Artist Biography
Julián Andrés López Flórez is a Colombian visual and media artist based in New York. His practice moves across photography, installation, painting, sculpture, textiles, performance, and 3D modeling, developing long-term research projects such as Formas que Respiran, Tótems del Sudor, and The Sick Flower.
His work critically examines the image as archive, fiction, and site of power, addressing questions of post-truth, migration, memory, and material spirituality. López approaches art as an embodied and figital practice, where ancestral forms, ritual systems, and symbolic geometries intersect with contemporary technologies such as 3D printing, and virtual environments.
He holds a B.A. in Communication and Educational Informatics from Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira and has pursued further studies in documentary filmmaking and digital strategy. His work has been exhibited and performed internationally across the United States, Colombia, Brazil, and Spain, including presentations at The People’s Forum (New York), Nomad Wall (Cincinnati), and Downtown Art Center (Honolulu).
López’s practice operates as an expanded inquiry where art does not represent life, but actively participates in its material, political, and spiritual conditions.
CV
Education
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B.A. Communication and Educational Informatics, Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, Colombia (2011)
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Documentary Film Direction, Black María Film School, Bogotá (2013)
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Digital Marketing, Google–IAB Spain (2015)
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Graduate-level seminars in Aesthetics and Creation, Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira
Selected Exhibitions & Performances
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River to Richards, Downtown Art Center, Honolulu, USA — Group Exhibition (2025)
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The Sick Flower, Nomad Wall, Cincinnati, USA — Solo Exhibition (2023)
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Material Liberation I & II, The People’s Forum, New York, USA — Fashion Performance (2021–2022)
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Minini, Museo de Arte de Pereira / Casa Obeso Mejía, Cali, Colombia — Installation (2017)
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Pure Pose, La Cuadra, Pereira, Colombia — Solo Exhibition (2017)
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Kiuby Cave, Museo de Arte de Pereira; Estación de la Sabana, Bogotá; Museo de las Fortificaciones, Cartagena — Live Cinema (2015–2016)
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Acción Documental de una Obra, Banco de la República, Pereira — Interactive Video Installation (2011)
Residencies & Grants
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NESI Creative Residency, Málaga, Spain (2017)
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Centro Cultural Ciudad Móvil, Cartagena, Colombia (2016)
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Comunes Creative Economy Residency, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2015)
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Emergenciás Circulation Grant, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2015)
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Ministry of Culture of Colombia, Digital Culture Program (2012)
Professional & Media Practice
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Television Producer, Señal Colombia (2012–2015)
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Visual Designer & Performer, FICCI – Cartagena International Film Festival (2016)
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Photographer, Discovery Channel – La Ruta de la Danta (2016)
Cultural Impact
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Work featured in HBO’s Betty (2020–2021)
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Garment from COLON collection worn by Lil Nas X (2022)