De pronto me percato de la poca importancia que tiene mi temor a fracasar. Constato que los míos no son los únicos sueños, ni las mías, las únicas palabras que narran su maravilla. Acepto la alta probabilidad del fracaso porque cedo ante el deseo de compartir el hecho de que la vida es un misterio que da vértigo, y que podemos asombrarnos en compañía. Nunca hay soledad en la escucha y la escritura del sueño. 

La canción detrás de todas las cosas,
Gabriela Damián Miravete.

The image of a camel carrying the world on its back appears and fades. For nearly 40,000 years, they have moved their limbs across an Earth that preserves the memory of those long steps within its layers. The question, “What does a camel carry?” serves as a starting point for a boundless conversation about memory and its material constitution. Whether literally or metaphorically, this inquiry hides a less apparent abstraction: What connects our animality to that of these creatures, to the Earth, and to the Universe?

In After Wind, Colombian artist Natalia Mejía brings together a series of works that unfold a temporal elasticity, blurring the boundaries between images and revealing how history is constructed from its own remnants. Various elements—representations of camels, bones, measuring instruments, and constellations—compose a palimpsest. Despite the erasure of its content, time unveils what was hidden. This process is articulated through two key gestures: the search for found materials and the deliberate scraping of images previously engraved, attached, or drawn by the artist. These strategies deconstruct the nature of memory—both individual and collective—comprising disparate fragments linked by connections that are not always evident.

Tablets, glass bones, and a skin-wall emerge as archaeological findings from a resonant past and a future-present. Each fragment takes us to deep times, both micro and macro, inscribed in the mineral, chemical, or organic composition of our bodies. 

Memory is not merely evoked through an image; it is embedded within the matter itself. Amid a network of pulses, neural-constellation connections emerge, flickering and illuminating in a relationship of interdependence that transcends human and non-human existence, beyond life on Earth. By delving deep into this memory, a vanishing point is created toward a time impossible to grasp but contained within every particle that composes and interconnects us. 

Since childhood, I have had hyperesthesia. This condition, which entails an exaggerated sensitivity to a multitude of stimuli, eventually evolved into acute intuition. I remember holding my mother’s hand and feeling how our lifelines intertwined, transcending time and space, turning us into a cosmic whole—a mystery we could barely glimpse. Though she was unaware, I felt the tightness in her chest as if it were mine. Her body spoke to me, and sometimes, I could intuit her thoughts.

Over the years, this sixth sense intensified. I transitioned from perceiving emotions through touch to deciphering the emotional significance an object held for someone. There was something magical about that journey into the past, which I later transformed into a secret language, expressed in letters sent to unknown addresses.

Exploring the shapes within an artifact connected me to its stories, leading me to their purest essence. This reflection led me to consider how the organic and mineral matter that formed my body also resided in these objects imbued with affection.

One day, while browsing an antique shop, a glass case caught my attention. Inside was a bone with markings that piqued my curiosity. The label read: “Baboon bone, Upper Paleolithic period.” I was surprised to find such a thing in such an unassuming place. With a lump in my throat, I asked the shopkeeper for permission to touch it, explaining my special connection with ancient objects. His skeptical gaze and the “Do Not Touch” sign discouraged me.

Faced with refusal, I decided to touch the glass case. My pulse quickened, and suddenly, I felt a portal open in my mind. I awoke in a damp darkness, surrounded by the smell of wet earth and decomposing leaves. The scent was strangely familiar, like a forgotten dream. My body had traveled through neural connections to meet that fierce animal yet unnamed as human.

I felt different. I touched my long, tangled hair; my hands, though similar, were smaller, with long, strong nails. Crouching, I touched the rough ground of what seemed to be a cave. There lay the bone. I touched it eagerly, discovering its incisions. Instinctively, I picked up a nearby stone, damp from the sweat of my hand.

I crawled toward an exit. Beneath a starry sky and a full moon, I returned to the cave with the bone and the stone. I etched a mark representing the current lunar phase. I felt my body: swollen breasts, a rounded belly, a trickle of blood running down my legs. I was alive, fully aware of it.

As I emerged from the trance, the shopkeeper eyed me inquisitively and pointed to the “Do Not Touch” sign. With a disinterested tone, he added, “You can’t touch the furniture either.”

I didn’t care. I remembered reading that “man” discovered evolution by using a bone as a weapon. However, after my experience, I understood that it was the recognition of the existence of time that truly marked that transformation. And that time, I am certain, was measured by a female body observing its lunar cycle.

Fernanda Ramos Mena