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Gabriela Liebano (Caracas, 18 years old) holds back tears as she looks at a plasticine sculpture she is holding in her hands. It’s her 14-year-old self with the backpack she’s dragging behind her, the figure flooding her with memories. “It makes me nostalgic,” he says, not taking his eyes off the statuette on display in the Débora Arango room at the Gabriel García Marquez Cultural Center in Bogotá. Until next August 30th, this place will house dozens of clay figures sculpted by Colombian artist Edgar Álvarez to commemorate the journeys of migrants in America.
Álvarez and Liebano met on the side of the road in central Colombia in 2019. He explored the area while she went back to Venezuela with her family. Although the crisis drove her out of the country in 2017, resignation after a devastating stay in Peru forced her to return. “They looked like the Three Wise Men, but led by children,” the 49-year-old sculptor and entertainer recalls his impression of the tour group marching along in single file, whose lives are spread across rucksacks.
Their meeting had several implications. With the help of Álvarez, who found a job for Liebano’s mother, the family turned around and settled in Bogotá. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the woman and her three children joined the more than 2.4 million Venezuelans living in Colombia. In addition, his story became a living portrait of the migration drama for the artist.
Now, four years later, the character of Liebano and his family is at the forefront of the exhibition Refugees and Migrants in America, a work in which Álvarez uses clay figures to try to capture the reality of the thousands of exiles making their way through Colombia. Central America and the Darién plug with the illusion of a better life.
Artist Edgar Álvarez’s exhibition Refugees and Migrants in America on migration in Bogotá, Colombia, on August 3, 2023. Diego Cuevas
The depiction of human tragedy is nothing new for him. More than a decade ago, the He Explained It With Plasticine project began, an educational commitment to addressing social challenges in the hope that the use of children’s materials would foster empathy in a society nearly immune to the pain of others. “In the end we all made a clay doll,” argues the artist, who not only models the figures, but also photographs them in real spaces and develops animations based on them.
This search for empathy led him to carve the bodies of the street dwellers of the city of Los Angeles when he lived there and in 2014 to make the short film “Los Invisibles” about conflict in Colombia and now migrants like Gabriela Liébano. “You have to put the light on what you want others to see,” explains the artist as he walks through the figurines, photos and animations of his characters in the showroom.
In the midst of presenting Álvarez’s work, Mireille Girard, representative of UNHCR Colombia, warns of the massive attitude towards migrants and refugees on the planet. “Compassion is tired,” emphasizes the officer in a louder voice; a symptom in a panorama where migration is unprecedented. According to the organization, at least 108.4 million people worldwide have had to flee their homes, and in 2023 a record 250,000 people crossed the Darien Jungle on foot.
Edgar Álvarez arranges details of one of his sculptures during the Refugees and Migrants in America exhibition in Bogotá, Colombia. Diego Cuevas
Álvarez hopes to continue to reflect that reality. Darién, sueños de barro is the short film that he is preparing based on animations of seven of his plasticine migrants who dared to cross this jungle hoping for a possible future. The artist has already seen part of the route firsthand and met people who motivated his work, just as Gabriela Liebano and her family once did.
The 14-year-old girl, who is now older, is also full of dreams. “I want to give my mother a house and then buy one for myself,” she says. “Dying in Venezuela, on Isla Margarita,” he continues after a few seconds. Although he no longer commutes between his country, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, he retains the memories of what he experienced when he just began his life journey. Maybe that’s why, at just under 18, he speaks sentences from someone who has lived longer. “How hard it is to be an adult,” he says as his gaze gets lost among the sculptures. Gabriela Liebano is no longer on the road with her backpack, but continues to bear the burden of migration.