A component of “The River Within/El Rio Desde Adentro; a Binational Collaboration/ una Colaboración Binacional,” between artists: a binational collaboration between Gloria Posada, Carlos Uribe, Juan Luis Mesa, and Ahní Rocheleau.

In response to Curator Juan-Alberto Gaviria’s invitation to exhibit at the Paul Bardwell Contemporary Art Gallery in Medellín, Colombia, instead of an exhibition, Rocheleau proposed collaborating with local environmental artists in Colombia whose practice resonated with her own, and traveled to Medellín and Bogota to meet potential collaborators. The first component of the four-component The River Within/El Río Desde Adentro, a nighttime video of the mountain headwaters of the Santa Helena tributary flowing into the Medellín River returned the paved-over waters to the surface of Calle de La Playa (‘The Beach’ street). Residents remembered laundering clothes and communing along the river before its social-fabric-disrupting asphalting.
Starting at minute 28 and 17 seconds of the You Tube Video “Santa Elena está perdida: la historia enterrada en La Playa”: (Documental): See visual and verbal references by Carlos Uribe and Gloria Posada to Retorno, the history of the Medellín River, the Retorno and to the component of the of the The River Within/El Rio Desde Adentro in Providence, Rhode Island.