Alberto Baraya

Born in 1968 in Bogota, Colombia
Lives and works in Bogota, Colombia

Over the past years, Alberto Baraya has constructed a Herbarium of Artificial Plants as an ongoing project that re-elaborates royal scientific journeys of the 18th and 19th century to the Americas, such as The Spanish Royal Botanical Expedition in Nueva Granada, which recollected, dissected, classified and framed non-European nature. The names and visual representations given to each plant in these aforementioned colonial campaigns, constructed the scientific reality in which today we still rely on. In his herbarium, Baraya appropriates and interprets “scientific” forms and functions of representation/construction in order to create taxonomies for artificial plastic plants that he has personally found or gained from friends and colleagues. Baraya’s intervention makes these fake and uncanny taxonomies seem closer to reality, resulting on an ironical comment on the scientific paradigm, as well as on our everyday cultural aesthetic behaviors and uses of these types of plants.

Exhibitions
2012 – Voyage Voyage. Un Art Contemporain Déboussolé – Maison de L´Amerique Latine, Paris.
2011 – Botanica After Humboldt – Comisariada por Rosa Olivares. CDAN, Huesca.
2011 – Estación Experimental – Comisariada por Andrés Mengs y Virginia Torrente. Centro Dos de Mayo. Madrid.
2010 – Expedición Nova Brasiliensis – Galería Nara Roesler , Sao Paulo, Brasil.
2009 – Expedición Nueva Zelandia – Grovett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth , New Zealand, dic 2009.
2009 – Expedición Venecia – Pabellón Latino Americano. IILA. Arsenale. 53 Bienal de Venecia.
2009 – Everything has a name, or the potential to be named – Gasworks, Londres.
2009 – Historia Natural y Política – Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. Bogotá.
2007 – GreenHouse – ArtProjects. Miami-Basel Art Fair. Collins Parck, Miami.
2007 – Displaced, Contemporary Art from Colombia – Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, UK.
2007 – Positions in Context – CIFO Grants Program Exhibition. Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami. USA
2006 – How to live together – 27th Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brasil.
2001 – Expedition Europeen – individual intervention en el Musee Guimet des Arts Orientaux. Un Tokyorama para el Palais de Tokyo. París, France.