Snyder Moreno Martín

Artist and educator

1991. Born in Colombia and based in the United Kingdom.

Snyder understands art as a tool for personal and collective healing and spiritual transformation. Art is an essential mechanism for facing and transmuting challenging experiences; therefore, it assists in learning from them. This process of learning and constant falling and rising is what he calls a spiritual path.

His projects have a strong experiential and contextual component; these emerge from personal encounters that allow him to reflect on existence and deep into environmental, political, affective, and material aspects. His practice takes an ethical perspective, being aware of its ecological and emotional impacts.

He is interested in learning about ancestral ways of knowing, other epistemologies, spirituality, decolonial theory, and gardening. Most recently, he is interested in how humans relate to other living beings and Planet Earth.

Artistic Residencies

2019 Fonderie Darling. Montreal, Canada.

2018 LILHA Artistic Residency. San Francisco (Nayarit), México.

2017 FAAP Artistic Residency. São Paulo, Brazil.

2016 Escuela FLORA. Independent Studies’s Program. First semester. FLORA ars+natura. Bogotá.

Shows (Selected)

2021 Together it seams. Standpoint Gallery. London, United Kingdom.

2020 36th Annual Exhibition. Southwark Park Galleries. United Kingdom.

2018 1,2,3 por los artistas y todas sus creaciones. LILHA Artistic Residency. San Pancho, México.

2018 Permanent Creation. On the other side of the Atlantic. The Centre for the Less Good Idea. Johannesburg, South Africa.

2017 Rios reflexos de nós. Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica. São Paulo, Brasil

2017 Nuevos Nombres. Museum of Art Miguel Urrutia (MAMU). Bogotá, Colombia.

Full C.V. on my website

About Sculpture and my studies at the RCA (2019-2021)

Why did I choose to study Sculpture at the RCA? I choose Sculpture because some of my projects had a strong material identity, and I wanted to go deep in this field.

When I first arrived in London and the RCA in September 2019, I had many expectations, many of them unrealistic ones. I wanted to travel, have many shows, make contacts, and project my artistic career in this country. But, not, after almost two years, I had to give up on them. Slowly my main goal and my only expectation were to keep me alive.

In January 2020, I had surgery in Kings College Hospital. In February, the college was closed due to the tutor´s Strike (which I firmly supported). In March, the virus appeared, and I was classified as a high-risk patient by the NHS; So, I needed to shield during the 2020 and part of 2021. In conclusion, I spent most of my master without accessing the studios and workshops at the RCA.

In this period, where I could not go out, I had to go in; it is not that I had not done it before, but I did it with more commitment.

In the second trimester of 2020, I started a new routine of exercises. In June, I started psychoanalysis sessions; this process has been very intense and introduced many changes in my life. In the same month, I moved to Reading, looking for a more conducted atmosphere for my healing process.

In October, I created a Study group open to all the students at the RCA focused on Healing and Spirituality. The participants decided that they wanted to study the Tarot, and it lasts for almost half of a year. I also started taking singing lessons and slowly approaching yoga practices.

The tutorials and online workshops at the RCA were also helpful; these were not just academic spaces but also activities that warmed and kept my spirit alive during the most challenging months of the pandemic.

Perhaps you are asking, why is he talking about himself instead of talking about sculpture? Because in this time, I realized that I was the sculpture I was working on.

I had not big shows or contacts with galleries and curators, but I found myself, and that is the most precious and unexpected gift I received in the past two years.

Now, I also want to show you some of my other works:

(This image belongs to my project: "Mosses´ Diary -We are an ongoing conversation-", which I will be showing at Cromwell Place in London from 23rd to 26th of June. I will be performing from 3:33 pm to 5:55 pm, get your free ticket here)

Warning: This work contains mature or explicit content.

Click to Enter

⚠️This video contains nudity in a delicate and natural way

In this video performance, the human body interacts with a Globe made of recycled paper bags from deliveries and groceries, originally trees.

The performer creates a relationship of empathy, affect, and caring with the Earth. A choreography of subtle moments composed by the rhythm of deep breathing. The naked body creates an intimate relationship with the Globe, becoming one single body, underlaying the reciprocal succession of causes and effects; what happens to one affects the other.

Unfortunately, our contemporary society has been built with colonial and extractivist policies, which has created the illusion of separation from the Earth. Instead of taking unlimited resources from Mother Earth, this action suggests that it’s time to take personal responsibility and become parents of our Planet, parenting it and ourselves, which means growing up as humanity.

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⚠️ If you are going to play this video, please watch it till the end. It is important.

This action reflects the feeling of physical and social suffocation created by the economic and social crisis aroused by the pandemic in 2020, and the struggling, as humankind, of going through this profound transformation process.

I use serpentine movements to resonate with the snakes, archetypes of fertility, wisdom, transformation, going deep, and recognizing traumas. In this ritual, I remove aspects that are no longer necessary; while giving birth to a new being, generating relief and light.

This video performance reflects on how visceral and intense healing processes can be. It suggests that social changes start from deep and personal healing, where each person faces and accepts their wounds and work on them. Just then, it is possible to stop the chains of different kinds of violence in society.

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Video Performance

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4 minutes 44 seconds

2020 Birth Conceptual Healing Ethics (non-human)Healing Pandemic Performance Ritual Snake Spirituality Trauma

Watercolour and pencil on paper. 45.4 x 27.2 cm. 2020 — I made this drawing on my birthday. I painted it mixing images, sensations and, subtle perceptions from my dreams, childhood memories and, fields of energies. The right section shows the folding and unfolding of energy in nature; the center, a celestial realm with an angel, and at the left, a self-portrait shows the time before time, a place with portals and several dimensions.

Soil, watercolour, acrilic painting and pencil on paper. 60.6 x 44.7 cm. 2020 — This tree reveals the constant energy transmutation through serpentine oscillations, the process of how dense and dark matter could sublime into lighter and sacred realms. The first layer of this drawing was made in a park at Reading (UK), being in a state of communion with the environment and using soil. This drawing is inspired by the Tree of Knowledge and the yin and yang energies.

Watercolour and pencil on paper. 61 x 45.5 cm. 2020 — This drawing shows four animals that I have met in different ways during this life process: The deer, the eagle, the snake, and the whale; they have been messengers and guardians, in other words: animal powers. In the center, there is the body of a tree, with its energy centers. One side shows the soul and the other the spirit. This drawing is inspired by the Wheel of Fortune and The World, Tarot cards.

Clay, watercolour, pastel and pencil on paper. 61 x 45.5 cm. 2021 — This drawing shows the astrological transits for 2021. At the left, there is the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius, as a starting point of profound changes, characterized by social tensions between freedom and restrictions. On the right side, it shows the electric energy of Uranus in Taurus as the awakening of our planetary system. At the bottom, Mars’s tensions are defiant energy that breaks and initiates changes. In the center, two hands join together to represent social contracts needed

Watercolour and pencil on paper. 61 x 45.5 cm. 2021 — I made this drawing to catch a very subtle perception that I have while doing SMK meditation. These drawings, diagrams, and texts are notations and sketches of something that I don’t understand with my logical mind. It deals with a time before time, the first moment of the constitution of matter, that instant before the great duality, before destruction and construction, done and undone, expansion and contraction; before of all that, and paradoxically, at its core.

As above, so below. Urine and fire on paper. 61 x 45.5 cm. 2019-2020 — This drawing expresses that the separation between humans and nature is an illusion. The burned core creates a kind of embryo or uterus that expands its action till branches and roots, joining sky and earth. “As above so below” is a maxim in the hermetic tradition, which represents the Law of Correspondence, where everything is connected, and the world is structured by fractals and geometries.

Alchemy Astrology Chakras Divine Geometry Knowledge Meditation Memories Psychoanalysis Sacred Geometry Tarot Unknown

Discussion

The Absurd School: Absurdity and Global Issues-image

The Absurd School: Absurdity and Global Issues Thursday 1 July 13:00 (GMT +0)

Alternative WorldsVirtually RealContemporary art

Snyder Moreno Martín

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About

Royal College of Art

Snyder Moreno Martín

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Banco de la República- Colombia

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Gilbert Bayes Award

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About

Royal College of Art