Colombian artist Juan Covelli is internationally recognized for portraying social issues and realities through deep-rooted visual art. His most recent work, Atrato, named after one of Colombia’s most significant rivers, is currently on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the world’s most renowned museums. The artist shared an interview with Colombia One.
Covelli has built an unconventional artistic career that began with a background in political science. “My interest in art emerged from a need to translate ideas into images—ideas I couldn’t put into words; in reality, I wasn’t so interested in art itself, but rather in thinking from a more visual place,” he explains.
This search led him to explore photography in his early years and later to settle in Europe for 12 years, where he completed a master’s degree in art at Central Saint Martins in London.
There, he consolidated his artistic practice, focused on questioning and dismantling colonial narratives: “I wanted to bring art, science, and technology together, centered on thinking about colonial histories and memory, and on how, through heritage, technology, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and these new tools, we can change those colonial logics,” Covelli elaborates.
Juan Covelli approaches Colombian memory through the Atrato and other rivers
Juan Covelli has developed an unconventional artistic trajectory through research into territories, memory, and new technologies. His work raise questions on how we narrate our history and landscapes, particularly through bodies of water that have shaped and contain Colombian memory.
In recent years, Covelli’s work has been marked by research around Colombian rivers, with projects such as El Salto, which reflects on the Salto del Tequendama—an emblematic waterfall located southwest of Bogotá, historically represented as a natural symbol, yet also affected by processes of environmental deterioration and social neglect.
In this project, the artist also explores how these representations has been historically and symbolically linked to narratives of domination.
“I was very interested in the idea of the difference between landscape and territory, two logics that are very different.” remembers Covelli abou the time when he became interested in the botanical expedition and the figure of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the first to pictorially depict the Salto del Tequendama.
For the artist, these early representations are not neutral: the one who represents also names, and the one who names exercises a form of possession over the territory—an idea that critically runs through his research.
Nowadays, the Atrato River became the central axis of his most recent work, ATRATO, a project deeply rooted in the territory of Chocó, Colombia, not only because of its geographical relevance, but also due to its historical, social, and environmental weight. In 2016, Colombia’s Constitutional Court recognized the river as a subject of rights, a historic decision that nevertheless contrasts with a reality on the ground, where illegal mining and pollution continue to severely affect the river and the communities that depend on it.
Bold artist uses art and technology as a space for critical intervention
To address this tension, Covelli turns to technologies such as artificial intelligence and 3D modeling—not out of technical fascination, but as critical tools. His practice seeks to displace anthropocentric thinking and question the power structures reproduced through technology. His working philosophy is clear: to challenge a system, one must first understand how its mechanisms operate. As he himself states, “to be able to attack something, you have to be inside it.”
Building on this position, Covelli establishes a parallel between the long history of gold extraction in Colombia—rooted in colonial exploitation—and its contemporary forms. While illegal mining is often discussed as a present-day issue, his work situates it within a much older continuum of north–south dependency. The gold extracted from rivers like the Atrato does not disappear; it reappears embedded in everyday technological devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers.
In Atrato, this critique is articulated through the very tools under examination. Human presence is deliberately minimized, allowing the river, its flora, and its fauna to take center stage. Covelli employs drones, game engines such as Unreal Engine, and satellite imagery as alternative modes of seeing—non-human perspectives that challenge anthropocentric representations of territory. By using the same digital technologies he critiques, his practice operates from within the system, revealing the false neutrality of so-called “clean” technologies and insisting on their direct connection to ecological damage, territorial violence, and the material realities of places like the Atrato River.
Atrato within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London activates critical dialogue
Presenting Atrato at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London—an institution historically shaped by imperial collecting practices—becomes a consciously critical gesture. Rather than approaching the museum solely as a platform for international visibility, Covelli positions himself within its structures to activate an institutional critique from the inside. By doing so, the work exposes the mechanisms through which colonial power, extraction, and cultural legitimization have historically operated.
The installation establishes a layered dialogue between pre-Columbian artifacts from the museum’s collection, contemporary digital media, and newly produced sculptural works. Small archaeological gold pieces—previously catalogued under a generalized label despite originating from diverse pre-Columbian cultures in Colombia—are brought into direct conversation with a large-scale video essay that addresses extractivism and colonial continuity.
Alongside them, Covelli presents objects made from gold recovered from electronic waste: forms that resemble pre-Columbian artifacts but deliberately resist authenticity. Displayed within the same vitrines, these elements trace shifting relationships to gold before and after colonization, revealing how ancient cosmologies have been replaced by globalized systems of consumption.
This narrative is further reinforced by a live LED screen displaying the fluctuating international price of gold, a reminder that today’s historic market highs are directly linked to ongoing territorial and environmental damage. Spatially, the work intervenes in the museum’s Victorian architecture through a large-scale installation that disrupts conventional exhibition logics—introducing reflective surfaces, palafitic structures, and an immersive soundscape. These transformations emerged through complex negotiations with the institution itself, underscoring Atrato’s disruptive presence and reaffirming its aim: not to adapt to the museum, but to unsettle it.
The reception of ATRATO in London has been significant. For many viewers, particularly outside Colombia, the work has served as a first encounter with the reality of the Atrato River and the Chocó region. The project has helped to make visible how global consumption—especially of technological devices—is directly linked to extractive dynamics that affect specific territories and communities.
Rather than offering closed answers or moral lessons, Covelli hopes that ATRATO leaves what he calls a “germ”: a seed of reflection that accompanies the viewer beyond the exhibition space. An invitation to critically reconsider our relationships with the environment, technology, and the territories that shape our shared history and future.