Part of LOT-EK’s “Spill” exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, 2024

Grandpa, do you remember when we went to Santa Marta? It was 3 am when my mom woke me up. The whole family was getting ready for our 18-hour road trip to the coast. Everyone was coming: my parents, my sister, my grandparents, and Cindy, our dog. Bogotá was still asleep as we drove through it. Very quickly, we ascended the mountains. We couldn't see anything but a subtle fog floating on the road. As the sun rose, it slowly unveiled the beauty of the eastern range of the Andes. The road was curvy, and every turn revealed a different shade of green. As we descended the mountain, the weather got warmer. Colombia doesn't have seasons, instead, it has very diverse and rich ecosystems that change based on the altitude. It depends on which point of the mountain you are standing on. The one element that bridges all ecosystems is water which takes different forms.

From top to bottom, the glaciers have snow and ice, the paramo hides water coming from the rain and fog under the topsoil which slowly releases it to create rivers, the cold and temperate zones have rain and rivers, and the warm zone has oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic. How lucky we are. The sunlight was in full force when we reached the valley, and we drove almost in a straight line between the Magdalena River and the Andes. The Magdalena is our strongest and weakest geographic point. It's the vein that connects the sea with the center of the country. It's where the main imports and exports travel by ship, train, or truck, and it has the most fertile lands, the ones the Spanish saw as gold. After so many hours of driving, we reached the last piece of the Andes, an isolated glacier mountain known as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. We were so close, and I got excited to touch the sea.

Growing up, I didn't visit the sea very often, so I didn't take it for granted. Swimming in the open sea was always so magical. My sister and I would play with the waves for hours. We learned how to swim in a swimming pool, so drinking salty water was inevitable. This trip revealed to me what Colombia means to me, but, more importantly, it helped me understand that my relationship with the land and water is vertical, not horizontal. It means going up, going down, going up again, going down again. Land and water intertwine and coexist, and then, at the very end, water is all you see.