Silvia Juliana Mantilla Ortiz
Silvia is a transnational individual with constantly expanding roots. Her notions of home and belonging continuously swell in order to include the many places where a piece of her being resides; these include Bogotá, Colombia; Edison, NJ; Providencia, Colombia; Williamstown, MA; Giron, Colombia; and now Los Angeles, CA.
Silvia’s migrant perspective manifests in her practice, as she constantly seeks to challenge and explore accepted notions within her many communities, highlighting the ruptures present in race, history, nationality, gender community, home and memory. As humans we are vessels of history, simultaneously accepting and defying the boundaries between male and female, local and transnational, past and present, real and imagined. We tenuously contain within us the presence of everything that came before us, and the hope for everything that will come after. What if our personal and communal stories slowly seeped through our pores overtaking our atmosphere? Silvia’s art explores oral histories, mixing media it collapses multiple meanings into a single instant in an attempt to build community and create a shared experience that points to the monumentality of our quotidian existence.
Silvia sees all parts of her life as intertwined and as such is constantly excited by the possibilities present in new pursuits. She is a dancer, a pyrotechnician, a wonderful cook and food-lover, a cultural anthropologist, a scuba diver, a community organizer and activist, and hopefully soon a capoerista.