San Isidro Labrador: Rituales para Invocar el Agua

(Video, 2025)

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San Isidro Labrador: Rituales para Invocar el Agua is a video work inspired by François Morelli’s 2018 performance for the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Mari usque ad Mare / D’un trou d’eau à l’autre / Piss and Vinegar. Performed by Javi Fuentes Bernal, the work unfolds in a dystopian Bogotá, tracing the passage of a solitary figure through nine abandoned downtown fountains. Each stop forms part of a search for water in times of drought, guided by improvised ritual gestures and prayer. Drawing on some of Morelli’s original performance materials, San Isidro Labrador: Rituales para Invocar el Agua explores the digitization of performative actions through looping, fragmentation, and morphing, constructing long, slow, and meditative scenes.

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San Isidro Labrador, Saint Isidore the Labourer, was a Spanish farmer canonized in 1622 and is venerated as the patron saint of farmers and labourers. Across the Americas, he is invoked during times of drought through prayers calling for rain and the restoration of the land. His veneration has also been absorbed into syncretic traditions, where figures imposed through colonial Catholicism have been re-appropriated and re-signified. In Colombia, devotion to saints often moves beyond formal Catholic practice, merging with popular rituals, magic, and everyday forms of spirituality to form a living system of belief shaped by resilience, adaptation, and layered inheritances.

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This project was developed in residence with 7a*mgr8 (2025–26 edition), curated by Paul Couillard.

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