Camilo Cogua Rodriguez

Camilo Cogua-Rodríguez’s artistic work explores the possibilities of expanded animation and interdisciplinary creation. Through his practice, he investigates the boundaries of matter, space, and the body, seeking aesthetic hybridization and the shared temporal dimensions between traditional animation, volume, and sculpture. His approach proposes animation as a physical and perceptual laboratory to evoke absence and somatic experience. He is the author of works such as “Salou, Sábado septiembre 17“ (2025), “Quisiera que el café me supiera distinto“ (2023), the experimental short “Nocturno en Chapinero“ (2023), and the VR piece “La ausencia“ (2022), screened at venues across North America, Europe, and Latin America. Holding a PhD in Art from the Universitat Politècnica de València, he writes on the moving image in Colombia and contributed to “Animation: A World History“. He is a professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and a board member of ASIFA Colombia.

Absence and distance are inscribed in time as a catalyst to explore the boundaries between volumetric animation, sculpture, and light. This project explores the temporality of life through an intimate contrast: the perception of a mother’s aging process and a daughter’s childhood. Amid physical distance, these realities are elongated and flattened through screen-mediated images, reconfiguring themselves until time inevitably transforms childhood into adulthood and old age into finitude. It is a practice-based research project on the gestures with which a child/parent attempts to mend distance in order to achieve closeness.

During the residency, I intend to translate this conceptual research into a visual and technical development laboratory. My goal is to explore the interactions between the still image and movement through translucent materials. I will work by combining analog animation techniques with computer-aided digital fabrication technologies to build optical devices and volumetric pieces that dialogue with light. The purpose is to physically materialize those “impossible times“ that inhabit the interstice of being neither near nor far.

This residency represents a crucial opportunity to decontextualize my daily practice. The studio discipline and the encounter with a new urban geography will operate as catalysts for the visual development of my next animation. I aspire for the cultural exchange with the residency community and my drifts (dérives) through the city to allow me to discover new textures and ideas, transforming the experience of geographical displacement into a tangible aesthetic substrate.