Alejandra Orjuela

ARTIST, PHOTOGRAPHER & FILMMAKER

About

Alejandra Orjuela - is a speculative Colombian filmmaker, photographer, and experimental artist fascinated by the natural world around her who works with biobased materials and alternative processes using analog mediums and experimental practices. Orjuela's work visualizes and translates these possible futures into speculative scenarios in order to contribute to the philosophical discussion. By eliciting the viewer's imagination through a variety of scenes and stories. Alejandra hopes to provide viewers with new perspectives on the past, present, and future through her artistic research, projects, and films. Alejandra captures natural ancestral territories in images characterized by a serene, poetic quality and her internal emotional landscape, primarily using cyanobacteria, analog film, and the sun.Her visual work includes subjects ranging from mountains and oceans to previously unseen wilderness. Alejandra explores future materials depicting changing territories. Her practices are at the crossroads of art and science, highlighting social issues such as climate change and migration.EXHIBITIONS2023 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, Regenerate, Noorderlicht Photography Festival, NL.
2023 Iceland: The Land of Ice & Fire, PhotoFair Jakarta International Photography Festival, ID.
2023 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, Past & Present, Der Greif, GM.
2022 Iceland: The Land of Ice and Fire, Images for Climate Change, FINI. MX.PUBLICATIONS2024 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, Photomonitor, UK.
2023 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, PhotoWorks, UK.
2023 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, Future Materials Bank, NL
2022 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, Analog Cookbook Issue 6, USA.
2022 Iceland: The Land of Ice and Fire, Analog Cookbook Issue 6, USA.WORKSHOPS2023 Photography Critique with Jacob Aue Sobol, Mangnum Photos.
2022 Deep into Caffenol by CuriosoLab
2022 Sustainable Darkroom Seaweed developer - LandArt Collective
2022 Death to the real with Pablo Martínez-Zárate, Mamut Festival.
2022 Mentorships with Franco Lolli & Capuchine Mahe, Evidencia Films
2021 Ethnographic Fictions with Laura Huertas Millan, Mamut Festival
2021 35mm Film Image Digitalization, Cinemateca de Bogotá.
2017 Documentary Photography and Migrations. Andes University, 070 Magazine.
2017 Analog and Experimental Lab by Zona Cinco.RESIDENCIES2019 Experimental Film & Performance, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, UK.EDUCATIONBA in Film & Media, CO

the garden of eden: solar equator

EXHIBITIONS & PERFORMANCE2023 The Garden of Edén: Solar Equator, Regenerate, Noorderlicht Photography Festival, NL.
2023 Past & Present Interactive Installation & Artistic Intervention Der Greif, Germany.PUBLICATIONS2024 The Garden of Eden, Photomonitor UK.
2023 The Graduate Issue, Photoworks UK.
2022 Analog Cookbook Issue 6, USA.
2022 CyanoBacteria - Future Materials Bank, Netherlands.“The flower in the heart’s wallet, the force of what lives us outliving the mountain. The flower’s pollen is older than the mountains, and our faces, my heart, brief as photos.” John Berger.The Garden of Edén is a research-based and experimental anthotypes series that seeks to move away from toxic processes. This series proposes a new regenerative photographic art system by using what already exists to create and design a sustainable and regenerative body of work based on future materials with living regenerative materials such as cyanobacteria and microalgae. Spirulina (Biomass of cyanobacteria, and microalgae) uses photosynthetic pigments, such as carotenoids, phycobilins, and chlorophyll, which absorb energy from light.I seek to question my position as a photographer and artist regarding the environmental footprint I have on Earth and how to achieve images sustainably. Therefore, I experiment with the image using future materials such as cyanobacteria (the first forms of bacteria capable of photosynthesis and which require less light.) to create images that reflect climate change and the impact of photography on the planet. These photographic prints are made by using the chemical process of photosynthesis, the photosensitive properties of microalgae as emulsion, and the sunlight as a developer. "The action of the sun’s rays is to destroy the color, effecting a sort of chromatic analysis, in which two distinct elements of color are separated, by destroying the one and leaving the other outstanding." The History and Practice of the Art of Photography by Henry Hunt Snelling.The pigments oxidized, producing a photographic print providing access to clean art at the intersection of future materials and interconnected systems while starting a conversation on the future of Art, sustainability, and regenerative design providing solutions to things we have to solve in order to fix and repair the broken systems that have already been degraded or lost.

ICELAND: THE LAND OF ICE & FIRE

"Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in Ice" Robert FrostEXHIBITIONS
2023 Iceland: The Land of Ice & Fire, Jakarta International Photography Festival, ID. (upcoming)
2022 Finalist at Images for Climate Change, FINI - MX.PUBLICATIONS
2022 Analog Cookbook Issue 6 USA.

CAMINANTE

Hybrid Expanded Documentary - In developmentDirected & shot by: Alejandra Orjuela.Experimental Documentary: Super 8mm, Super 35mm & 4K digital.LABSDeath to the real with Pablo Martínez-Zárate, Mamut Festival, CO. 2022Caminante is an Expanded experimental Film Installation that aims to surface an inherent unconscious activity rooted in the act of survival. A visual and sensorial journey through ancient territories putting perception, experience, the conscious and the unconscious into dialogue.