Leonardo Cortina is a photographer, graphic designer and artist born in Colombia in 1996. He is currently finishing his studies in Visual Arts, specializing in photography and audiovisuals at the Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia. Being very young, he already has a wide production, has participated in multiple exhibitions and has been awarded. His work is represented in collections such as the Museo Bolivariano de Santa Marta and Galería La Aduana, in Barranquilla.

The artistic discourse of Cortina, from an ethnographic investigative methodology, revolves around the notions of the beautiful, the harmonic, explores movement, everyday life, and reflects on traditions and social practices. He tells us about his work “As an artist I have been investigating the ways in which Art can be applied to everyday life, not only as a device for self-reflection, but as a way to generate and install models of social interactions capable of provide new ways to interact through new media. In my work, I present various modalities of interaction with our daily lives. Starting from the footprints we leave day by day through poetic thoughts, indigenous ethnic groups, and their lifestyles to the social problems we face daily”.

In the series presented by Arte Original, Mawianrukun and Háyu, the artist gets involved and photographs the IKÜ community, an ethnic group that is deeply spiritual and philosophical. The artist investigates the emotional, symbolic, and spiritual connections between human beings and nature, between the people and the environment. He notices and highlights, with big close-ups, the particularly geometric configurations of ritual objects and tools.

Movimientos efímeros (Ephemeral Movements), on the other hand, using the sweeping technique in photography, has the purpose of registering the collective routine of the great masses -of which the artist is a part when he goes to work or study, for example- and the traces left by each subject.

Ana Beatriz García