Devenir Universidad: Ursula Biemann, Hernando Chindoy Chindoy, Maria-Belen Saez de Ibarra, Waira Jacanamijoy, Flora Marcas, Ivan Vargas
Ursula Biemann (b. 1955, Zurich, Switzerland) is an artist, author and video essayist. She conducts fieldwork from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water. In her multi-layered videos, she interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, science-fiction poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality. Since 2018, Biemann has worked on a major commission by Museo de Arte, Universidad Nacional de Colombia for the co-creation of a new Indigenous University in the South of Colombia led by the Inga people, where she contributes the online platform Devenir Universidad and collaborates with the Inga community on an audiovisual archive. She has published numerous books, including Forest Mind with Spector Books (2022) and the audiovisual online monograph Becoming Earth on her ecological video works 2011–21. Biemann has had recent solo exhibitions at MAMAC Nice, France, and the Centre culturel suisse in Paris, France, and an upcoming solo show at MUAC Mexico City, Mexico. Her work has contributed to major museum exhibitions worldwide and in numerous international art biennials. Biemann was appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea in 2008. She has received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Grand Award for Art, the Prix Thun for Art and Ethics (2018), and the 2022 Zurich Art Award.
