I am an art historian from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia with an MA in Liberal Studies from The New School for Social Research in New York City. My career journey began by seeking clarity on existential questions through the study of art and the past. And although I initially envisioned myself in academia, after my Master’s degree I felt a need to do something different with my education. I currently work as Content Curator at Ilustre, the leading digital platform in Latin America for education on history and culture. At Ilustre, we also manage the luxury travel brand, Babylon Project, and the personal brands of two public historians. In these spaces I have learned how to share history and culture to a wider audience, without losing academic rigor. We tread the line between knowledge and marketing.

I have co-founded projects with my peers like Afro and Indigenous Futures, which brought scholars and artists who have explored questions like: How can we cultivate a radically different relationship with the environment in the face of impending disaster? How can art engender liberating ways of knowing, imagining, and ultimately producing the world? Thanks to this work, I became a Founding Member of the Latin Futures Association (ALAF for its title in Portuguese), where I co-lead a webinar series with Latin American artists whose work, from different angles, is aligned with questions of ancestral wisdom (learning from the indigenous civilizations of Latin America, instead of solely relying on the region’s European heritage), future generations (thinking of protecting the rights of people who have yet to be born) or more-than-human futures (imagining future landscapes where relationships between humans and other species are not so fraught). I find it funny that I started my career thinking too much about the past and now I am in spaces where we must think of the future, even 100 years ahead, however speculative! But I believe both the past and future are not so neatly separated, and the exercise of imagining is important to think of what actions we can do today.

I applied to the 30U30 Mentorship since I have been navigating a non-linear career path, exploring the space between academia and the cultural sector, where I’ve learned about digital marketing, multimedia storytelling and the balance between a cultural mission and commercial interests. I felt (and still feel) that my profile didn’t quite fit anywhere, so this program represented a crucial opportunity to clarify how my skills can best contribute to the arts and culture sector going forward. I have learned immensely from my mentor, especially about the museum sector, and he has clarified a lot of practical questions that I don’t think I would’ve found the answers to elsewhere. The masterclasses have also been enlightening and have given me much more confidence in taking ownership of my career. I hope I can retain strong ties to CTA as well as my mentor and peers in the future!