Ituango

Hidroituango is one of the ten largest hydroelectric plants in South America and the largest in Colombia, harnessing the Cauca River to generate energy. Its construction began in 2010, and it was initially scheduled to start operating in November 2018. However, in April 2018, a landslide in the diversion tunnels caused a blockage. This contingency posed significant risks for downstream communities.

Thousands of people in the affected area had to be evacuated due to the danger of the river overflowing the dam and devastating the Bajo Cauca region. Additionally, the electromechanical equipment inside the powerhouse had to be sacrificed to filter the water. In the following years, efforts focused on regaining control of the project.

From 2016 to 2021, I worked as an engineer on the construction of this hydroelectric project. This experience has served as a starting point for me to interpret the territory as a representation of the intervened landscape and the tension that arises between nature—understood as that which exists before human intervention—and the built and inhabited spaces created by humankind.

I have witnessed how large-scale infrastructure projects drive unchecked growth, threatening to create an imbalance in ecosystems that seems irreversible. Proyecto Ituango examines this contemporary notion of progress and the exploitation of resources in the name of development. Through narratives and statements, it seeks to question collapse, fracture, and overflow. Likewise, it prioritizes the political over the technical, focusing solely on utility while disregarding environmental consequences—shielded by the so-called Antioquian resilience—themes that, like layers of information, emerge throughout this investigation.

The project explores how nature is altered through civil works made of concrete, forming a kind of containment wall that divides and reshapes the river’s surface. How matter (concrete) gradually takes on a form that, in turn, covers, conceals, and condemns—a gray stain expanding so that urban development may claim territory from nature. Industrial elements are placed in tension with organic materials, shapes, and elements, generating new paradoxical and contradictory situations.