Natalia Castañeda
Manizales, Colombia (b. 1982).
Natalia Castañeda Arbeláez is a multidisciplinary artist whose work documents the changing relationship between humans and nature, the tensions and fluctuations in how we wish to shape a landscape and how that landscape resists or submits to change.
Natalia is dedicated to documenting specific territories, in particular mountains and glaciers in Colombia, and a great deal of her visual research and sketches are created en plein air. By visiting and documenting sites of natural interest she develops and captures an emotional cartography of the landscape in the hope of fostering a more respectful relationship with our environment.
Back in her studio in Barcelona, where she currently lives and works, Natalia combines her visual field studies with scientific information and personal experience to create painted narratives of the sites she has visited. These narratives are fluid and ever-changing, brimming with vital energy. Each canvas contains a universe and a story within itself. And placed together they create a powerful and dynamic map of a natural world in flux.