Colombian photographer and artist Margarita Beltrán and her family recognize themselves as victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. Through her artistic production, she has dedicated herself to tell the stories of the marginalized, especially the story of her family around the political violence in Colombia and stories of the LGBTIQ and BIPOC community in Germany. In her project “Arder la casa,” she talks about political violence, family, and exile.

“It explores the contingencies of political violence in Colombia through my family history and my father’s exile. In 2015, after finishing his term as mayor of a small-town bordering Venezuela, my papa crossed the Colombian border — fleeing the political persecution he had been subjected to for decades. I remember him disappearing on different occasions when I was still a child. But fairy tales that my parents told me justified his absence.”

“Now, for the first time, I could understand my family was fragmented and separated in the harshness of a country where political violence has the worst statistics in the world. Witchcraft, religion, socialism, and mafia culture are at play within the cultural environment of the story. My father’s exile marks an inflection point from which the project develops. Traveling between past, present, and future, I unveil our history to reveal traces of violence, separation, and cyclical escapes.”