Raisa Galofre’s work challenges Western narratives around gender and identity, offering an alternative perspective that embraces the “clash, mixture and encounter of opposites”, as she describes it. Her photographic series Daughters of the Muntu. A Pluriverse – parts of which we feature in this issue – delves into the multilayered history and life of Muntu Americanas in the contemporary Colombian Caribbean region. Based on Manuel Zapata Olivella’s novel Changó, el Gran Putas, Galofre’s series explores the interrelatedness of human beings whose existence is deeply grounded in a continuous, ongoing communication with nature and other beings. In her series Aus Hand und Stein, a photograph from which, titled Der Liegende, we include here, Galofre asks how historical narratives would change if the narrators came from the Global South. For this work, she collects archival texts and images from which a non-linear and imaginative storyline evolves, revealing how different perspectives can shape history in different ways.

Image Credits

Raisa Galofre, Portrait of a Carnival Dancer during Barranquilla’s Carnival, Colombia, from the series Daughters of the Muntu: A Pluriverse, 2015 - ongoing © Raisa Galofre

Raisa Galofre, Todos los tiempos en uno (All the times in one), from the series Daughters of the Muntu: A Pluriverse, 2015 – ongoing, © Raisa Galofre

Raisa Galofre, Der Liegende (after Waldemar Grzimek), from the series Aus Hand und Stein (From Hands and Stones), 2015 - 2016, © Raisa Galofre

Raisa Galofre, El fuego vivo de la cumbia vive en nosotros (The vivid fire of Cumbia lives within us), from the series Daughters of the Muntu: A Pluriverse, 2015 – ongoing, © Raisa Galofre