Exposición Jorge Eliecer Gaitán - Casa Nariño 2025

Project Details

Jorge Eliecer Gaitán Exhibition – Casa Nariño 2025

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DESCRIPTION

Let's imagine we are in Bogota, on July 19th 1947. We are in a balcony facing the Plaza de Bolivar, along with Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, looking at how a crowd gathers in silence with burning torches to reject the assassination of the liberal across the country.

Below, the plaza is a collective body sustained by the organization of many: at La Perseverancia there were improvised community children daycares, so that mothers could attend; in other neighbourhoods, neighbourhood committees came to call door to door; the suffragettes filled posts and corners with notices that ran as a rumor through out the entire city.

From the balcony, the scene acquires another thickness. It is not only a protest: it is the public appearance of those who had been historically excluded from the political field. Gaitán's rise, his speeches in theaters, radios, and plazas, had gone on the expectation of a real change, one in which ordinary people could participate, decide, and be heard.

It is a bustling plaza that looks up. And a country that, for a moment, seems possible.

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was known primarily for his assassination on April 9th 1948, and for the violence outbreak that shook Bogotá in response to this event, which was called the "Bogotazo".

However, the historical impact of this event has overshadowed the analysis on Gaitán's socialist left project and the role of working people and peasants in its momentum. In order to expand this gaze, the exhibition brings together press files from 1931 until 1949, to thoroughly understand the political gaitanista program and the participation of social sectors in the massive demonstrations in support of this project and the presidential campaign.

The design and museography of the exhibition respond to this story of political, popular and socialist participation of Gaitan's project. These allude to the public plaza, looking at the crowd from the balcony, as if they were viewing it from the Gaitan's eyes. Items like flags, banners and billboards, reconstruct the atmosphere of the moment, evoking the relationship between leader and the people.

This exhibition has been an opportunity to explore other Gaitán files and create around a political memory that has not been as visible in the last few years. The exhibition will be permanently in the Palacio de Nariño. Thanks to Camila Cardenosa for exhibition's graphic design, Natalia Tejada for the curatorship and file work. Santiago Guevara for the illustration. Felipe Pinilla, Hernan Camilo along to all the Yemail Architecture team for the museography and devices. To Bé Studio for the photos and the video that recorded this project.

DETAILS

Use

Exhibition

Second life

Furniture reused for the National Library of Colombia.

Area

60 m²

Location

Bogotá D. C. – Colombia

Meters above the sea level

2640 m

Year

2025

Client

Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

Design

Yemail Architecture

Project team in architecture, furniture and museography

Antonio Yemail + Felipe Pinilla

Graphic design

Camila Cardeñosa

Construction and assembly

Ejecutar Diseño

Curation

Natalia Tejada

Photo credits

Santiago Beaume and Paola Bermudez

Categories: 1.2 Museography, Culture