Santiago Lemus - Until blood becomes pollen

Using my thumbs, I press hard on the pills, still covered by their packaging.

The aluminum foil of the blister pack is broken, and an opening is created.

Tock! Like the hand of a clock.

I take a pill and place it in the palm of my hand before slipping it into my mouth, where, trapped in saliva, it waits static.

Then, a half-full glass of water joins the ritual and sends them through the digestive tract.

This happens every day of the week, preventing the virus from replicating in the blood.

This act protects the sacred liquid.

A habit and a ritual diﬀer, above all, in their intention. While the habit comes from the automated repetition of a behavior, the ritual is guided by symbolic value and a conscious purpose. Often, through practice, rituals become so deeply rooted in the body that they domesticate our daily gestures and become part of our identity.

Until Blood Becomes Pollen, 2024, is an art installation composed of almost 2,000 sculptures of earth, honey and wax, a metaphor for a vital ritual that puts death and the intention to live in constant tension. The work arises from observing two biological phenomena: HIV infection and the behavior of honey bees as they build their honeycombs. In both cases, the force that transforms matter -blood and pollen- lies in a serial action; a virus that spreads and infects a body and a swarm that sustains a hive.

The materiality with which Lemus conceives his works reveals an intrinsic link with his territory and with other beings from the earth. His sculptural thought explores the transmutation and language of matter by placing it in an encounter with other substrates. In this piece, the soil is present as a time of latency for life, as the symbolic place of death but also as a possibility for sowing and gestation, and honey, known for its medicinal properties, especially for strengthening the immune system, becomes the healing element that seals the ritual.

After collecting nectar, the bees return to the comb and regurgitate it along with enzymes from their stomachs into each cell. We humans call this bee vomit honey.

Worker bees’ wax is produced by specialized glands in their abdomens.

With it, they build and maintain honeycombs and seal each cell.

This wax seal, called an operculum, prevents excess water from damaging the honey.

This act protects the sacred liquid.

Besides being an analogy for the support of the oﬀering in each ritual, each bowl contains the unique and diﬀerent gesture of taking a pill. This act, reproduced thousands of times, has left a tangible archive of time and the artist's relationship with the virus. Each blister and each box is a trace and a sculptural force that materializes the process of a perpetual treatment.

Until Blood Becomes Pollen invites us to contemplate a body from the collective, the biological and the poetic experience while oﬀering a reﬂection on the human condition, transmission, and healing. In each ritual, Lemus sweetens the earth to harvest an intention: to stay alive.

Germán Escobar

Santiago Lemus

Variations for harvesting an operculated body

1920 pieces of beeswax operculum on bowls made of earth and honey
810 cm x 244 cm
2024

Visit the exhibition at Espacio KB until December 15, 2024, to see this piece.

Creation process

Detail of a blister pack sculpted with the gesture of removing a pill daily

Sealing in beeswax operculum of 192 blister packs, each containing 10 pills

Illuminated wax piece

Information associated with each blister pack box of antiretroviral medications

Creation of bowls using earth from Sogamoso (Boyacá) and honey from Apis Mellifera bee hives in Tolima and Huila.

The bowls were made during several sculptural sessions with Carolina Sánchez, my mother, and Consuelo Lemus, my aunt.

Sound piece

Created with the aluminum foil from blister packs
22:42 min
2024

The weight of time is light in the wind

Pharmaceutical material in honey
Mono video
12:49 mins
2024

Encounters to Build a Swarm

Within the framework of the exhibition, a series of meetings were held for bodies living with HIV and for those who do not, to let words blossom using the metaphor of bees, their hives, honey and blood as sacred liquids.

1st Encounter "The Foundation of the Hive"

Special guests: Amapola, Miguel Ángel López (Más que tres letras), Camilo Acosta (Los Amarillos)

This first dialogue aimed to invite and gather individuals interested in reflecting on living with HIV. A space was opened to allow the flourishing of individual and collective memories and experiences, as well as the particularities of the various contexts that shape these narratives, such as age, race, gender, sexual identity, access to health and treatment, sociocultural and economic factors, vulnerabilities related to gender diversity and sexual orientation, sex work, education, and discrimination. Finally, through a creative exercise, we delved into how to sweeten the experience of living with HIV both individually and collectively, as well as challenging stereotypes and promoting the demystification and destigmatization of living with the HIV virus.

2nd Encounter "Collect the Nectar, Offer the Honey"

Special guest: Eduardo Merino Gouffray

This dialogue was guided by the biology and ecology of bees, their behavior as a social species, cosmological stories of the U'wa indigenous people, and the song of bees. We also discussed the importance of conserving Melipona species and the term "emboscarse." The dialogue was accompanied by a practical workshop in which we sweetened the word with honey from angelita bees and worked with earth and honey as primary sculptural materials.

Photography by Aura Lucía Murcia

3rd Encounter "The Spirit of the Swarm"

Body and Creative Writing workshop

Special guests: Santiago Llano, Andrea Velasco

After the Encounter "The Foundation of the Hive," we continued to reflect on HIV as both a vital and social experience. Using methodologies of body mobilization and creative writing, we sought ways to narrate what we call "hinge moments" in the life of any body, as well as the current challenges of living with the virus, considering the particularities that arise in diverse contexts. We allowed the poetic and political voice of both seropositive and seronegative bodies to flourish.

Photography by Aura Lucía Murcia

4th Encounter "Let the Pollen Fall on the Flower"

Printing workshop

Based on the texts resulting from the meeting "The Spirit of the Swarm," a poster-making workshop was held, aiming to introduce participants to simple techniques for creating posters while materializing the texts created for a following intervention in public space. The logic of poster art, based on the mass reproduction and replicability of a single element, shares similarities with the process of virus propagation and the establishment of a hive.

Photography by Aura Lucía Murcia

5th Encounter "The Swarming Fever"

Public space intervention

Appropriation of public space alongside the collective Tomamos la Palabra, based on the posters created in the meeting "Let the Pollen Fall on the Flower."

Work dedicated to Elsa Marina González Pérez

Much gratitude to all the beings who have been and are part of the hive: Carolina Sánchez, Juan Rodríguez, Consuelo Lemus, Angelina Guerrero, Davide Gatti, Germán Escobar, Camilo Acosta, Sergio Escobar, Esperanza, Aura Lucía Murcia, Sergio Bonilla, Andrea Velasco, Santiago Llano, Miguel López, Amapola, Juan Felipe Camacho, Mateo Mondragón, Felipe Mora, Juan de la Mar, Cristian Charry, Daniela Diusabá, my family, and all the people who accompany that sacred body.