The Chiribiquete petroglyphs are an invaluable legacy of the pre-Columbian cultures that inhabited the Colombian Amazon, depicting human figures, hunting scenes, animals, geometric patterns, and astronomical symbols. This project seeks to reinterpret these symbols from a modern perspective, using Calligraffiti to connect the past with the present through art.
My work is part of what we know as Calligraffiti. By fusing calligraphy, typography, and graffiti, this discipline finds its common point in the letters. Calligraphy provides mastery of the tool, an aesthetic sense, and a deep connection with history and culture. Typography, on the other hand, provides a balance between form and function, a necessary order that provides visual beauty. Graffiti adds an expressive, dynamic, and immediate visual language, which allows one to experiment and transcend the size limitations of calligraphy and typography.
Almost paradoxically, Calligraffiti frees us from the strict rules of calligraphy and typography while overcoming graffiti’s need to be clandestine and illegal.
I trained in the visual part of Calligraffiti: the Gothic script, the Arabic, the ornaments, and the composition. However, at some point, these strokes lacked personal meaning, an empty repetition. So I started to tell my own story, resorting to what I knew: the petroglyphs of Chiribiquete. Their symbolism inspired me to create a calligraphic stroke with a symbolic, asemic, and visual meaning.
By applying the concepts of Calligraffiti, I have reinterpreted the petroglyphs of Chiribiquete, transforming these ancestral lines into a visual language loaded with symbolic, yet asemic, meaning. Asemic writing allows us to emphasize the break with the traditional meaning of writing, exploring new forms of communication.
I have transformed the lines of the petroglyphs into stylized calligraphic strokes. These strokes, rooted in our ancestral being, are vaguely familiar to us and invite us to search for a deeper meaning, to feel a connection with something that, although we do not fully understand, attracts us powerfully.