Beatriz González

During the early 2000s González noticed that photojournalists were increasingly publishing images of soldiers or civilians transporting dead bodies. Those images moved her, because in the nineteenth century cargueros were men who took famous explorers, such as Alexander von Humboldt, through the country in order to show them its riches. Now the carriers play a very different role. They reveal the drama that inhabitants of Colombia had to face every day. Beatriz González began collecting clippings of these cargueros: images of naked bodies or bodies being dragged along in hammocks or plastic bags. Those bodies served as the basis for a series of silhouette drawings and paintings revolving around the theme of ‘carriers’, of which Cargueros de Bucaramanga (2006) is the main work.