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Forero Linares, Brenda Yineth

In the case of the Colombian Truth Commission, this essay examines how artistic and symbolic expressions such as performance can facilitate testimonial transmission between witnesses and survivors. Specifically, I analyze the event “Encounter for the Truth: My Body Tells the Truth,” which was organized by the Colombian Truth Commission as part of its social dialogue strategy. Drawing on this case study and relevant literature, I analyze how performance can shift the spectator towards active engagement, fostering a deeper emotional and embodied connection with survivors’ testimonies. I argue that art serves as a catalyst for understanding and empathizing with the profound impacts of violence. My chosen case study demonstrates how art helps resist the normalization of violence, with art’s affective quality encouraging witnesses to engage with depicted violence on a visceral level while stimulating critical thinking and action towards the non-recurrence of violence. Moreover, it highlights the dual nature of art in both conveying the painful realities of violence and showing the endurance of survivors and their communities. This exploration underscores the importance of supporting and integrating survivors’ ways of knowing, perspectives, and methodologies into truth-telling spaces, as this creates possibility for these spaces to be restorative and safe.

Text

University of British Columbia. GRSJ 510

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0445316

Arts, Faculty of; Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, Institute for

Reviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/