In Spanish, the phrase El Encuentro carries multiple layers of meaning. It can signify a discovery, a finding, or a meeting point. When artists Laura Camila Medina and Cecilia Vargas Muñoz were choosing a title for their upcoming exhibit at The Luminary, they decided on El Encuentro because it encapsulates the spirit of their first meeting, the intergenerational dialogue woven into their practices, and their distinct, yet connected, paths, with Muñoz having lived her entire life in Colombia, while Medina has spent much of hers in the United States. The title speaks to the rich and layered complexities of these encounters between artists, between materials, and between meanings.
Muñoz is a clay artist who celebrates Colombian heritage and culture through her work. Her iconic La Chiva sculptures capture rural Colombian life in miniature, with hand-formed clay figures and objects set atop brightly painted traditional buses. In one sculpture, a man and woman sit among jute bags of Colombian coffee, bananas, luggage, and even a dog. Though Chiva sculptures are now mass-produced throughout Colombia and parts of Ecuador, the representations are inspired by Muñoz’s original creations.
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Medina’s interdisciplinary work “honors dreaming and imagination as crucial components of remembering and survival.” Her work combines painting, sculpture, and video collage to create vibrant, three-dimensional landscapes influenced by Bogotá, where she was born, and Central Florida, where she was raised. These layered environments reflect both her personal geography and the imaginative space between memory and migration.
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The collaboration between Medina and Muñoz began in 2023 through a mentorship in Pitalito, Colombia, sparked by a message Medina sent to Muñoz. “I don’t want to learn how to make a Chiva,” she recalls writing, “but I’m interested in the way you handle and transform clay to create such detailed miniatures that are very Colombian.”
Medina was struck by the fact that Muñoz worked entirely from memory. “She never looked at a photograph. This was her capturing her lived experiences and observations in clay. She just has that gift,” Medina says.
For something that began with such precision, the Chiva has become a symbol of Colombia, yet its manufactured form has become formulaic to keep up with the demands of mass production. Medina reflects on this shift in her installation: “What is lost when an object, like the Chiva, is mass-produced and severed from its context?”
El Encuentro explores the idea of an encounter as both “an embrace of memories and histories and a confrontation with the weight of symbols in motion.” The exhibit explores the landscapes of displacement, both physically and emotionally, and the transformation that occurs when people cross borders.
El Encuentro, which is supported by the Teiger Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Crawford Taylor Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council, opens at The Luminary on May 23 and runs through July 12. There will be an opening reception from 6–9 p.m. on May 23 and a closing reception with an artist talk from 2–4 p.m. on July 12.
