Laura Huertas Millán
The coca plant is one of the world’s most controversial plants. In the West, it is primarily associated with the recreational drug cocaine, which was first produced in Europe in the nineteenth century and has given rise to a violent system of drug trade and abuse. The plant’s healing and stimulating properties have endowed it with cultural and spiritual significance for the indigenous population of the Andes region, yet this fact has gone rarely mentioned in history books, pointing to the Western hegemony of knowledge among other factors. Since 2018, Colombian filmmaker Laura Huertas Millán has examined the coca plant in her work.
Her exhibition, Curanderxs (Spanish for “healers”), includes the eponymous multi-channel projection newly produced in 2024 as part of the After Nature . Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize as well as two further video installations. In her new work, Huertas Millán takes the initial prohibition of the coca plant by the Spanish while colonizing Latin America and develops a speculative narrative with a group of femmes who secretly distribute coca leaves in the seventeenth century. In response to the limited existing sources, the artist uses fiction as a strategy to imagine a fragmentary narrative about the colonialist appropriation of nature. Using an aesthetic of early silent films that references the archive’s silence, bold actors emerge from the dark depths of underground landscapes, offering support to enslaved indigenous workers by secretly distributing coca leaves.
In El Laberinto (2018), Huertas Millán combines found footage and her own 16-mm films made in Colombia. The film traces the labyrinthine memories of Cristobal Gómez Abel, who worked for drug barons in the Colombian Amazon during the 1980s. It travels through the forest and the ruins of a narco villa which is modelled on the one shown in US 1980s soap opera Dynasty. The artist’s visual language creates an immersive space to explore topics including trauma, salvation, and a search for identity.
Finally, the film projection Para la Coca (2024) examines contemporary ritual use of the coca plant in Colombia’s indigenous community, beyond assigned colonialist meanings and criminalization. Once again made in collaboration with Gómez Abel, the film tells the myth of the Murui who see the coca plant as a deity in the form of a girl who teaches his community about how to ethically use the plant. The film underscores the importance of respecting and preserving these cultural practices.
With Curanderxs, C/O Berlin shows Laura Huertas Millán’s first monographic exhibition in Germany, which is also bringing together her most recent works on the coca plant in a joint presentation. The double exhibition of the two prizewinners Laura Huertas Millán and Sarker Protick is curated by Katharina Täschner, Junior Curator at C/O Berlin. An accompanying publication will be published by Hartmann Books.
Laura Huertas Millán (b. 1983, Colombia) is an artist and filmmaker. She holds a PhD from Université PSL (SACRe-Programm) in Paris and conducted research at Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab as part of her studies. Her films have been shown at leading festivals including the Locarno film festival, FIDMarseille, Doclisboa in Lisbon, and Videobrasil in São Paulo. MASP São Paulo, Maison des Arts de Malakoff, and Museum of Modern Art in Medellín have mounted solo exhibitions of her work. Moreover, her work has been shown at Centre Pompidou and Jeu de Paume in Paris, Guggenheim Museum in New York, Times Art Center Berlin, Liverpool Biennale, FRONT International – Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Videonale in Bonn, and Sharjah Biennale. She lives and works in France.
