Carlos Motta

Stigmata

March – June 2023
MAMBO – Bogotá Museum of Modern Art, Colombia

Stigmata is the most comprehensive institutional exhibition to date of Carlos Motta’s work in his native Colombia. Spanning two floors of the museum, it presents a wide selection of works that reflect the artist’s enduring engagement with histories of exclusion, resistance and transformation.

Through installations, videos, performances, sculptures and archival material, Motta explores the ideological foundations of sexuality and gender. His practice moves between personal testimony and political critique, developing visual and discursive strategies to expose how bodies have been historically stigmatized by colonial, religious and normative systems.

The exhibition unfolds across two interconnected trajectories. One examines how systems of knowledge have shaped sexual and gender identities since the colonial conquest of the Americas. The other amplifies the voices of communities affected by contemporary structural violence and democratic fragility.

Among the new commissions, Hilos de sangre (2023) stands out as the most comprehensive archive of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Colombia to date. Shown alongside Virosis, a collective display of intergenerational Colombian artists, it reactivates silenced histories and affirms the political power of mourning and survival.

Stigmata affirms Motta’s work as a vital force in reimagining the relationship between aesthetics, justice and power.