- 23 August 2025 3 pm UTC
- dur 5 min
“4” is a performance and video art piece that emerges as an act of memory, resistance, and denunciation. Conceived as a tribute to the mothers of the four children who disappeared at the hands of the military forces in Ecuador, this work seeks to make visible the pain, the absence, and the ongoing search for justice in a country where impunity and state violence continue to shape the lives of its most vulnerable communities.
At the same time, “4” extends its poetic and political gesture toward the victims of ecocide and environmental racism that have historically affected the province of Esmeraldas. From an intersectional perspective, the piece weaves together the struggles for human rights, the rights of nature, and the dignity of Afro-descendant peoples, whose voices have been systematically silenced.
The performance becomes a ritual of mourning, resistance, and healing, while the video art component documents and amplifies these embodied memories. Through the body, gesture, landscape, and image, “4” invokes the presence of those who have been taken, and demands justice in the name of all lives that matter.
Cristina Navas Castillo is an Ecuadorian artist with experience in music and visual arts whose work encompasses photography, video art, video performance, and drawing. She has participated in national and international exhibitions in countries such as Peru and Brazil. Her work explores the relationship between the body in diverse settings, generating surreal environments that extend critiques or questions to the viewer through interplays between the poetic, the everyday, and the political. artist website
