VJ

ARTIST & FILM DIRECTOR

Valeria Jaramillo graduated with honors in 2012 from Javeriana University, where she studied visual arts. Then, in 2016, she moved to Paris, France, where she obtained her master's degree in film directing at the School of cinema of Luc Besson. She practices cinema, photography, painting, mural painting, drawing, sculpture, etching and writing. “The greatest celestial punishment is to have been endowed with an exorbitant passion and a tiny heart incapable of containing it.” "I believe that an artist can only master his art when he finally realizes that the beauty of nature exceeds his own talent, and therefore, the artist’s personal accomplishment is to have a constant sense of awareness of the poetic nature of his own existence and of his surroundings. I perceive everything as matter, and all matter holds its own beauty. I think of artists not as creators but as philosophers of aesthetics. My artistic approach is nothing but the act of surrendering to my curiosity and fascination. To have an insatiable thirst for beauty, knowing myself infinitely tiny before the sublime grandeur of the universe, and yet, daring to touch it. My work stems from questions rather than answers. The question itself is my object of study. Whether tangible or intangible, it remains matter. Art to me is simply the means to capture and transform this matter. My art may be figurative, but my thoughts are abstract. I attempt to turn these abstract philosophical questions into tangible forms by any means within my reach at the time. When doing sculpture, regardless of the material I am working with, I conceive it as a whole, and when I am touching it, caressing it, I feel as if my entire physical body blends into the piece. A similar phenomenon happens with painting, especially with mural painting. I feel as if the forms were already carved into the wall, and that my only job is to remove the void of the white layer that is covering it. When working with photography, I see time also as matter that can be captured by absorbing just the right amount of light. When writing poems, it is the melodies and the imageries that I try to seize. Everything is matter to me, and it can be dissected, deconstructed, analyzed, measured, modified, transformed, even my own soul. I think of it as a physical object, and it is through my self portraits in photography that I can explore this material. With my drawings, especially with the series Lemonia, I intend to grasp the universal matter of human passions. I feel like a hunter that has the compulsive need to chase them down and cage them on paper. Cinema, however, is an act of self-salvation. I make my films to be liberated from my innate destructive passions. Some want to paint the sunlight and the grace of the wind, I film the darkness of my soul so that it lights up with the sunlight and knows the lightness of the wind. Said otherwise, in those dreadful days when I lose my self, I look at my art only to find myself in it." Website: www.valeriajaramillo.com Instagram: @valartsfilms