Acrylic on canvas.  9.84 ft × 16.40 ft.   /  3 m × 5 m

This work interprets the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a shared point of departure for humanity.

The golden disc refers to the Golden Record, conceived in 1977 by Carl Sagan and his team and sent into space aboard the Voyager probes. This record contains sounds, music, images, and scientific information selected to represent human life on Earth. In this work, the disc retains its original condition: it continues traveling through the universe as a bearer of a human message.

Inside, it appears graphic symbols and sonic references that allude to a curated synthesis of humanity, in keeping with the spirit of the Preamble, an ethical aspiration toward dignity, coexistence, and the absence of war, disease, and cruelty.

The figure that envelops the disc is the Hydra, taken from the Book of Fixed Stars, a medieval Arabic astronomical manuscript. This reference acknowledges the fundamental role of Arabic knowledge in the historical construction of astronomy. The serpent is not presented as a threatening figure, but rather as a way to represent the universe that surrounds and contains the human message, as well as the unknown we still face as a civilization.

The Preamble, like this disc in transit, does not describe a finished reality, but an ethical horizon under permanent construction.

Read: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Watch video: explanation of Carl Sagan’s Golden Record and the Voyager missions

 Watch video: complete audio (5 hours)

 Watch video: the 116 photographs included on the record

Consultar manuscrito: Consult manuscript: Book of Fixed Stars (digital / e-book version)

Acrylic on Canvas and Paper pasted on canvas.   3 Mts X  2 Mts /  9.8 ft × 6.6 ft

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

This work is conceptually grounded in Carl Sagan’s Golden Record and in the real difficulty of creating an image capable of representing all of humanity without excluding races, bodies, or cultures. During its development, certain images of the human body were questioned within NASA, revealing the cultural and political limits involved in attempting to speak on behalf of the entire human species.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the inherent equality and dignity of all people, yet that affirmation has proven complex to translate into a single, universal image.

Faced with this impossibility, the work adopts the quilt’s structure as a visual and conceptual strategy. The quilt allows diverse fragments to be brought together without erasing their differences, proposing an idea of equality based on the coexistence of multiple identities within a single fabric.

In the lower left portion of the work appears the Sumerian symbol for the number one, one of the earliest known graphic forms used to represent beginning and unity. This sign explicitly points to Article 1, linking the origins of writing and human thought to the fundamental principle of equality that inaugurates the Declaration.

Watch: the video that tells the history of the record

Acrylic on canvas and fabric pasted on canvas    3 m × 5 m ≈ 9.8 ft × 16.4 ft

Genocide does not appear as a specific article within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration was conceived as a preventive framework: its articles seek to establish the conditions necessary to ensure that crimes such as genocide do not occur again. The prohibition and legal codification of genocide were later developed in specific instruments of international law.

However, during the process of creating this series, genocide emerged as an essential concept, not as a norm, but as a latent threat: that which the Declaration attempts to prevent and which, nevertheless, continues to occur. This work is the most personal of the entire series.

The red geometry surrounding the dragon represents my childhood home, specifically the swimming pool where we bathed as children. It was not a tiled pool but a dark, deep concrete structure, where the bottom could not be clearly seen. In that depth, my imagination populated monsters that could grab my feet and drag me downward. From that fear, the dragon is born.

The dragon resumes its function in medieval cartography, where such figures marked zones of danger, unknown territories, and real or imagined threats. Unlike other symbolic representations in this series, this dragon is destructive. In the image, it appears as a red force devouring a ship, without ambiguity.

As an interpreter in asylum cases, every person I accompany could be a member of my family or my close circle. Genocide ceases to be an abstract category and becomes a concrete human experience, repeated, recognizable.

In this work, genocide is presented as a fear we do not always see, but one that may be waiting at the bottom of the unknown. It is not a memory of the past, but a possibility that persists when human rights fail.

See: the map that inspired me to paint this dragon.

The entire Universal Declaration of Human Rights is based on a basic premise: in order to have rights, one must be alive. Although the right to life does not appear as an autonomous article, it is implicit in each of its articles.

This work represents life through the Flower of Life, used as a geometric structure rather than as an esoteric symbol. Its use draws on historical traditions in which geometry functioned as a language for thinking about the origin and order of life.

In Islamic geometry, as found in the Topkapi Scrolls, geometric abstraction enabled the expression of unity and continuity without resorting to figurative imagery. During the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci employed geometry to organize the body, space, and nature as expressions of rational order.

Here, the Flower of Life weaves these references together to point to a fundamental idea: life is the precondition for all human rights. Without life, dignity, freedom, and equality cannot exist.

See: selected images from the Topkapi Scrolls.

Acrylic on Canvas.    3 m × 5 m ≈ 9.8 ft × 16.4 ft

While developing, thinking about, and painting this series, I understood that I needed to return to the concept that gave rise to the entire project: The Tree of Longings. This work predates the series dedicated to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and functions as its conceptual root.

This is not my first calligraffiti piece, but rather my first direct foray into typography as image, within the expanded field of calligraffiti understood as a fusion of calligraphy, typography, and graffiti. To create it, I acquired large-format antique wooden letters. I inked each letter and, using a rubber mallet, struck the canvas to leave its imprint. The result is a tree made of words, because both the Constitution and the Declaration are, essentially, constructed of language.

Several letters “ñ” appear in the work, a letter unique to Spanish, serving as a direct indication that the Colombian Constitution is written in this language. The large letter A, inspired by illuminated initials in medieval manuscripts, stands for árbol (tree) and draws on the medieval French Canzoniere (Songbook), a manuscript filled with songs and poems. This choice underscores the optimistic and hopeful dimension of human rights. A small decorative dragon accompanies the letter, following the tradition of medieval illumination.

Read Chansonnier du roi (El cancionero) pdf -E-book

An editorial booklet accompanying the first stage of the project, The Tree of Longings, was developed in Houston, Texas.

The publication contains the exhibition invitation, a general explanation of the project, and the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The content is presented in English, in keeping with the context in which the work was developed.

Fifty printed copies were produced and distributed free of charge during the project’s public presentation.

→ Consult publication (PDF)