We are Colectivo BocaCalle; Made up of visual artists Isabella Portilla, Mauricio Moscoso (Mauricio MRZ), and Lena Zornosa. We were born as a collective in 2018 at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University.

During these years, we have traveled to different cities together, and on our journeys, we have always encountered elements and situations that surround the contexts of each city.

As observing city dwellers, our creation is tied to these particularities we find in different urban areas. We are interested in being wandering walkers, observers, and curious individuals who connect multiple fragments of various spaces at the same point.

Our language focuses on painting, engraving, and drawing, which are our preferred tools for creation.

City Drawings

2022 “Everything activates when the contradictions accumulate” we take this phrase from the chapter house and universe of Gaston Bachelard, a phrase that made us think of Bogotá because we consider it a city full of contradictions that weave into each other. From this fabric, particular spaces are formed that stand out by becoming a node of chaos.

We enter by observing the entire city from its characteristic generality composed of the meeting of lines that go in different directions, just like the lives of the city’s inhabitants. The limits of urban structures diffuse, and the particularity of each building blurs when we find ourselves immersed in the saturation of these contrasts; we seek a space of great emptiness, yearning for that calm that we cannot experience, trying to flatten and overlook the countless details offered by the infinite corners we cross daily.

Suddenly, in the midst of that chaos, we propose to gradually delve into this disorder, to rediscover and draw the shapes of chaos, giving a much more legible face to this vast mass that is Bogotá. We find a clash of textures, voids and non-voids, directions, nature, rooftops, walls, windows, and as we get closer, we begin to uncover chaos from its roots. When we start to capture each building, we dive into the image; beyond simple observation, we begin to hold a conversation with the depicted places, where our eyes and the engraving tip become a magnifying glass that meticulously carves each detail of the buildings onto the plate. In this way, we manage to perceive fragments like walls that tell stories, changing rooftops, and windows that contain the intimate details of the people who inhabit those particular spaces.