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Natalia Sorzano

sculptuur, schilderen, performance, LHBTIQ+, installatie, Geluid, Dekolonisatie, collage, Audiovisueel, Artistiek onderzoek

The form and content of my work is dictated by conversations and fieldwork I stage with guests, to amplify histories and become familiar with how social relations are enacted and how they transform our subjectivities. This method is defined by moments of collective imagining and thinking. I learned it and integrated it to my practice, from my previous experience as a policy-maker for the Colombian Government, where I did political dialogue with LGBTIQ activists across the country. In my research I contrast oral histories and academic discourses, contesting hierarchies of knowledge. I am interested in how interpretations of everyday life, history, and violence can be found through practices of relationship, worship, and mythological storytelling, mutating into phantasmagoric and macabre explanations of reality. I explore the versatility of our cultural tissues where notions of identity, coloniality and rooting are in dispute. It is the power within the polyvalence of the symbols disguised in these practices that I fold in my work.

Cannibal Enfleshments
Cannibal Enfleshments - On-going research - We are co-creating a myth that re-signifies the figure of the cannibal, reclaiming it as a transformative concept symbolizing mutual contamination, interconnectedness, and hybrid identity. The project engages with Latin American decolonial and cannibalistic discourses, which challenge notions of purity and propose hybridity and syncretism. By inquiring into the politics of nomadic queer and trans experiences within the Latin American diaspora in Europe, we aim to reclaim cannibalism from its colonial associations with savagery. Instead, we reinterpret it as a metaphor for absorbing otherness to stimulate new creation and foster community. Through a series of workshops and gatherings, we are developing multiple material outcomes using methods such as counter mapping, collage, character building, myth-making, immersive visualization, meditations, improvisation, dance, and manifesto writing. This collaborative project is undertaken with Papaya Kuir, an activist organization working with immigrant Latinx queer communities in the Netherlands. The installation in West, Den Haag, incorporates an arrangement of sculptural props, costumes, and other ephemera used by the activist collective Papaya Kuir in the worshops, leading up to a performance to video piece yet to be made. This installation is an on-going work that will develop and change throughout the course of the exhibition.
Cannibal Enfleshments - on-going research
Cannibal Enfleshments - On-going research - • Exhibition - mixed media installation. • Multiple dimensions. • Paper maché, metal, organic rope, corn cobs, tree sticks, soil and canvas.
Cannibal Enfleshments
Cannibal Enfleshments - On-going Workshops - • Participative research in-progress around the figure of the cannibal • Workshops with Papaya Kuir's extended community. • 5 gatherings to date, 4 hours each.
Cannibal Enfleshments - On-going Workshops
Cannibal Enfleshments - On-going Workshops
Cannibal Notations
Cannibal Notations - On-going research - On-going drawing series that serves as an illustrated lexicon created to support the conceptual framework of this research project. It combines concepts from indigenous epistemology, queer theory, post-humanism, ecological thinking, postnatural, and decolonial narratives, alongside quotes, reflections, and historical or ecological facts. The project proposes the cannibal as a conceptual figure and transformative device, embodying the politics of nomadic subjectivities within Latin American queer activism. It explores how this figure can channel multiplicity, embrace alterity, and drive social change while challenging dominant narratives. The lexicon functions as a foundation for structuring the research phase, including workshops and participant encounters. It forms a collection of interconnected ideas, with the potential to evolve into a publication that deepens these explorations and extends the discourse.
Cannibal Notations - On-going research
Cannibal Notations - On-going research - • Research in-progress.cm x 27cm each • On-going series of 20 drawings, • 21cm x 27cm each. • Water colours, ink and acrylic markers.
Trash Revenge
Trash Revenge - The project is the first outcome of a storytelling and sculpture collaboration with Clem Edwards. Using trash collected from the exhibition space, we created a landscape that acts as a character inspired by horror films like The Blob. It embodies discarded and unwanted objects “taking revenge” by growing, absorbing, and transforming. This work deals with themes of the abject and the interplay between the ethereal and the material. By reclaiming trash and embeding it within a fictional narrative, we examine ideas of value, decay, and transformation, reflecting on both material agency and material excess. We use humour and fiction to address urgent societal questions while proposing joyful and imaginative futurities. Commissioned to create this piece at Brutus, we transformed the exhibition space into a shared studio. We employed a collaborative “Ping-Pong” process, exchanging ideas and experimenting with materials like polymer clay, paint, LED lights, and smoke. Built with pizza cartons, pigeon nests, appliance scraps, and street trash, the work integrates sculptural techniques and shared interests in horror, ghostly figures, and exaggeration.
Trash Revenge
Trash Revenge - • Sculpture and installation. • 5 mts x 5 mts x 6mts. • Mixed materials such as soil, smoke, polymer clay and found objects.
On Desire
On Desire - Accompanied by performers Fyn [sarafina] Paulina Boni ta, Mariana Jurado, Lucija Gregov and Paloma Plantenga. Borrowing from music concerts, five live performers activate simultaneously with their bodies and voices, in harmony and rhythm, the sculpture-based music band Mud and Sticky Band (see following work), while following a score. The work explores the materiality and agency of the sculptures while interacting with other materials such as trash, lubricant, mud, fire, and organic remains. The performance examines the relationship between objects, bodies, and spaces, mediated by desire and intuition. It reflects on the agency of materials and textures observed during site visits across the Netherlands, weaving them into a narrative that connects landscapes, sound, and movement. Performers harmonize with the sculptures and the accompanying sound piece Mud and Sticky Band: Side A, which draws on embodied research and site-specific reflections. Props and actions echo the textures and shapes of visited landscapes, blending choreography, material interaction, and sound dialogues.
On Desire
On Desire - • Performance. • Duration: 40 minutes.
Mud and Sticky Band
Mud and Sticky Band - Music band made of monster-like characters built from pop-culture waste, recycled materials and natural remains. This object-oriented sculptural band emits sound and voices from its insides, taking the shape of a sound installation. The project began with embodied research conducted in natural and urban locations across the Netherlands. Guided by Sara Ahmed’s Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology, I used this text as a manual to navigate these environments, exploring the interplay between bodies, spaces, non-human entities, and materials. The research involved intuitive object collection and reorganization, soundscape recordings, movement notations, and choreographies inspired by objects and spaces. These were complemented by detailed sound descriptions, conversations with friends, and workshops with students. This work has been guided by an interest in finding new ways of relating to matter, ‘nature’ and the environment. By allowing my desire and subjectivity to be shaped and transformed through these interactions, the project creates a dialogue between sound, texture, movement, and form, reflecting an evolving relationship with the material world.
Mud and Sticky Band - • Sound, painting and sculpture installation. • Variable sizes. • Soil, tree trunks, mud, water, scaffolding netting, acrylic paint, clay, music instrument parts and found objects.
Erotic Encounters: Meditative Scores
Erotic Encounters: Meditative Scores - Painting and collage installation part of the embodied research project Mud and Sticky Band. The paintings serve as meditative scores for engaging erotically with bodies, spaces, and matter, while the collages explore their texture, agency, and shape. These collages and reflections guided the creation of the band’s members, shaping their performative capacities and personalities. The project responds to the urgency of rethinking our consumption habits and questions how shifts in our relationship with objects and surroundings will influence musicality, sensuality, and pop culture. It investigates whether new forms of music-making and band-creating can emerge from these transformations and from what’s immediately reachable and at-hand.
Erotic Encounters: Meditative Scores
Erotic Encounters: Meditative Scores - • Paintings and collage on paper. • Variable sizes. b • Acrylic paint, fabric, paper, tape, rope and netting.ia. While L
Contesting Madness - Contesting Madness is an installation consisting of four filmic chapters: The Animal, The Water, The Jungle, and The Nightmare. The work features a sculptural structure resembling human body parts, alongside video works, paintings, and objects. Inside the structure, a universe unfolds with video screens, props, mannequins, sleeping bags turned into snakes, fences with dripping liquids, and other transformed everyday objects. Performative responses to texts are staged with various participants, layering sound, symbols, and hybrid characters extracted from conversations around pereived notions of madness and magic. The installation itself blends sculptural and filmic elements, transforming everyday objects to challenge perceptions of identity, sanity, and knowledge. The work and films examine the impact of coloniality and diasporic movement on perceptions of sanity, challenging modernity’s dichotomies between human and nature, body and mind, and reason and intuition. It critiques the systemic violence of institutional bio-politics inflicted on ethnic minorities, impoverished communities, women, and sexual dissidents. Additionally, it investigates the body’s capacity to communicate beyond language and exist beyond legibility, even as it navigates society’s demand to transparency and graspability. The project is based on conversations with various guests based in Rotterdam, amongst them: RAM Supermarket operator (anonymous), Merel Hooijer, Virgil Zaalman, Floortje Meijer, Esdra Baris, Winti healer (anonymous), Lianne Rueb and Vanita and Johanna Monk.
Contesting Madness - • Four-channel video installation, painting and sculpture. • Fabric, rope, wigs, sleeping bag, chicken wire and paint. • Films duration: The Water 11’46’’; The Jungle 9’23’’; The Animal 8’49’’; The Nightmare 13’48’’.
Contesting Madness
Contesting Madness
Sissy-phus and the Mother Mountain
Sissy-phus and the Mother Mountain - This video piece fictionalizes the myth of Sisyphus to reflect on the history of LGBTIQ+ resistance in Colombia, exploring the ongoing struggle for basic human rights amid systemic barriers imposed by successive governments. It draws parallels between Sisyphus’s cyclical struggle and the LGBTIQ+ community’s resistance, juxtaposing the Western myth with the Colombian myth of la Madremonte to address queerness, de-coloniality, and disobedience as acts of resistance. The work highlights systemic oppression and honors the contributions of activists like Diana Navarro Sanjuan and Camila Esguerra. The narrative follows Sissy-phus, who encounters characters and natural elements representing power structures, alongside la Madremonte. Incorporating Colombian news and political statements, the film weaves myth, history, and lived experience to create layered reflections on power, identity, and social justice.
Sissy-phus and the Mother Mountain
Sissy-phus and the Mother Mountain - • Digital Video 18’26’’
Office for Irrelevant Affairs
Office for Irrelevant Affairs - Orbiting around a desk and an office cubicle, the main character intends to free neglected files entrapped in political unwillingness, while resisting three shadow-like characters. These embody the indifference of politicians, the weight of impunity, and the corruption that undermines the relevance of sexual minorities lives. The work deconstructs official state documents on violent cases, transforming them into a pluri-vocal narrative blending poetry, factual information, and personal storytelling. It addresses the systemic neglect and erasure of LGBTIQ+ rights in Colombia, reflecting my experience as coordinator of LGBTIQ Affairs. Despite creating foundations for a national public LGBTIQ+ policy together with activists, human rights organizacion and public servants, the work was dismantled by a new government, highlighting the fragility of progress for sexual discidents. By reworking official documents into a multi-layered narrative, the piece critiques the state’s failure to protect marginalized communities and honors the resilience of activists and survivors.
Office for Irrelevant Affairs
Office for Irrelevant Affairs - • Performance • Duration: 40 minutes

Not to be senseless - proximity music

Datum:
Locatie: Rewire Festival and iii instrument inventors
https://www.rewirefestival.nl/line/up/2025

Life On Earth Art and Ecofeminism

Datum:
Locatie: West Contemporary Art
In samenwerking met: Papaya Kuir
https://www.westdenhaag.nl/exhibitions/25_02_Life_on_Earth

Sonic Speculations

Datum:
Locatie: Echobox Radio
In samenwerking met: Other Futures Radio

Cannibal Enfleshments

Datum:
Locatie: Jacuzzi Amsterdam
In samenwerking met: Papaya Kuir

Book Fair

Datum:
Locatie: Wiels
In samenwerking met: Futura Resistenza and GHOST
https://www.wiels.org/en/events/wiels-art-book-fair-2024

Trash Revenge

Datum:
Locatie: Brutus
In samenwerking met: Clem Edwards
https://brutus.nl/en/programme/on+view/brutus+takeover/

Paper Biennal

Datum:
Locatie: Rijswijk Museum
https://museumrijswijk.nl/tentoonstelling-papier-biennale-2024-animal-farm-270

A Book For Dissapearance

Datum:
Locatie: El Matadero
In samenwerking met: Institute for Postnatural Studies
https://cthulhubooks.com/products/a-book-for-disappearance?variant=53388443451718

Postnatural Independent Program

Datum:
Locatie: Institute for Postnatural Studies
In samenwerking met: Institute for Postnatural Studies

Academic course.

https://ips-independentprogram.org/

I hope this message finds you well

Datum:
Locatie: Podcast
In samenwerking met: Kris Dittel and Eloise Sweetman
https://open.spotify.com/show/5gCmujCKkHHgmDSoPJYYx2

Radical Symbiosis: The Social Life of Microbs

Datum:
Locatie: Radius CCA
In samenwerking met: Curation by Mateo Chacón-Pino and Ángels Miralda
http://www.radius-cca.org/en/exhibitions/radical-symbiosis-social-life-with-microbes

Triple Pocket Napkin Fold

Datum:
Locatie: Art Space
In samenwerking met: GHOST collective

Podcasts commissioned by Art Space Sydney

https://www.artspace.org.au/program/ideas-platform/2022/triple-pocket-napkin-fold-ghost/

Mud and Sticky Band: On Desire

Datum:
Locatie: O Festival
In samenwerking met: Roodkapje
https://o-festival.nl/en/voorstelling/mud-and-sticky-band-on-desire/

Mud and Sticky Band> An Awakening

Datum:
Locatie: Roodkapje

soloexhibition

https://roodkapje.org/event/2023-02-opening-mud-and-sticky-band-an-awakening-by-natalia-sorzano/

Spectre Nightmare

Datum:
Locatie: Roodkapje

Group Exhibition curated by Mette Sterre

https://roodkapje.org/event/2022-11-exhibition-spectre-nightmare/

Willem Pijper a Very Modern Celebration

Datum:
Locatie: Worm

Collaboration with Rotterdam-based composer Christine Cornwell curated by Lucija Gregov

https://worm.org/production/willem-pijper-a-very-modern-celebration/

Wild Summer Art

Datum:
Locatie: Brutus
https://brutus.nl/en/programme/current/wild+summer+of+art+part+ii/

Free For All

Datum:
Locatie: Roodkapje

Group exhibition curated by Alex Phillips

https://roodkapje.org/event/2022-07-market-free-for-all/

Futura Resistenza

Datum:
Locatie: Roodkapje
https://roodkapje.org/event/2022-06-dali-muru-and-the-polyphonic-swarm-natalia-sorzano-futura-resistenza/

Smudge Soil

Datum:
Locatie: Roodkapje
In samenwerking met: Hocus Bogus

Group exhibition using riso printing as a common thread between the artists.

https://roodkapje.org/event/2022-04-exhibition-smudged-soil/

A través de la Ventana Canal Capital

Datum:
Locatie: Colombian TV Channel Canal Capital
In samenwerking met: La Familia Producciones and National Colombian TV Channel, Canal Capital

I was invited to make an episode about my practice that would be transmitted in the Colombian TV Channel Canal Capital and I was commissioned to make a new work this.

https://conexioncapital.co/programas/a-traves-de-la-ventana/

Who Wants to Live in a World Without Magic?

Datum:
Locatie: TENT

Across cultures and histories, consciousness-altering practices by shamans, mystics, and other healers, have had a longstanding relationship with art making, and with sound and music in particular. At this time of radical planetary disorientation, imagining restorative processes by way of cosmic consciousness can assist us in creating fertile grounds towards a path of mourning and healing rooted in a collective capacity. The works in the exhibition invite us to consider multiple, re-enchanted..

https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/tentoonstelling/who-wants-to-live-in-a-world-without-magic/

Shapeshifters (provisional name)

Datum:
Locatie: TENT

A través de la Ventana

Datum:
Locatie: Canal Capital

Full episode dedicated to my practice in the Colombian National TV Channel Canal Capital and the presentation of a new commissioned work.

On the Waves with Natalia Sorzano

Datum:
Locatie: Shimmer

commissioned sound piece

https://soundcloud.com/user-784731696/sets/on-the-waves-with-natalia

Sibling Gardens

Datum:
Locatie: Montez Press

Radio - Sound piece presentation

https://radio.montezpress.com/#/archive/1645

Reading and Floating

Datum:
Locatie: GHOST
In samenwerking met: Isabel Marcos

Grenouille du Sang

Datum:
Locatie: Tale of a Tub
http://a-tub.org/onsite/grenouille-du-sang/

Reading and transducing

Datum:
Locatie: GHOST / Tender Center
In samenwerking met: Paula Montecinos

Prospects and Concepts

Datum:
Locatie: Art Rotterdam
https://www.mondriaanfonds.nl/en/activity/prospects-concepts/

Omni Tóxica

Datum:
Locatie: Productiehuis Rotterdam Theater and Veem House for Performance
In samenwerking met: Paula Chavez

Visual Art and Scenography

45 Salón Nacional de Artistas de Colombia

Datum:
Locatie: Espacio Odeon
https://45sna.com/

Brandstof

Datum:
Locatie: Garage Rotterdam
https://www.facebook.com/events/garage-rotterdam/brandstof-office-for-irrelevant-affairs-by-natalia-sorzano/631705667296848/

Smeared States

Datum:
Locatie: Showroom Mama / Tender Center

Paisajes Distópicos

Datum:
Locatie: Bitacora
https://www.facebook.com/events/392366564689767/

Rituals of Transformation

Datum:
Locatie: WORM / TENT
In samenwerking met: Tender Center

BANFF Residency

Datum:
Locatie: BANFF Centre

Impugnando la Locura

Datum:
Locatie: Paraíso Bajo

solo show

https://cargocollective.com/PARAISOBAJO/IMPUGNANDO-LA-LOCURA

Frankenstein Backpack Show

Datum:
Locatie: Tender Center
https://tendercenter.space/Archive_M#one

Sesam Straat

Datum:
Locatie: Het Gemaal Zuid
In samenwerking met: GHOST

cocuration

Afecto Invernadero

Datum:
Locatie: Espacio Odeón
In samenwerking met: Laagencia

Beyond the Moon

Datum:
Locatie: Unseen Art Fair
In samenwerking met: Upominki

cocuration

Mouths United

Datum:
Locatie: WORM

Curation of GHOST program

https://worm.org/production/ghost-screening-mouths-united/

Quiero Un Presidente

Datum:
Locatie: Espacio Odeón
In samenwerking met: Editorial Salvaje
https://espacioodeon.com/lectura-publica-quiero-un-presidente/

Charlois Speciaal

Datum:
Locatie: RET Ateliers

open studios

In Watermelon Sugar

Datum:
Locatie: Poppositions
In samenwerking met: Laagencia

USELESS

Datum:
Locatie: ATTENT

solo show

The Half Sunk Hollow

Datum:
Locatie: Roodkapje
In samenwerking met: Madison Bycroft

FOMO Radio

Datum:
Locatie: Piet Zwart Open Day

GHOST and MIAMI

Datum:
Locatie: MIAMI prácticas contemporáneas
In samenwerking met: GHOST

Gentle Dust

Datum:
Locatie: Showroom Mama

Workshop commissioned by Mama At Het Gemaal Zuid

Poéticas de Signo y del Detour

Datum:
Locatie: MACBA - Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona
https://www.macba.cat/es/exposiciones-actividades/actividades/poeticas-signo-detour

Mobile Autonomy

Datum:
Locatie: Middelheim Museum

Piet Zwart Institute

Datum:

Master in Fine Arts

https://www.pzwart.nl/

Los Andes University

Datum:

BA Major in Law and BA Minor in Fine Art

https://uniandes.edu.co/

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