Ana María Devis Transforms Rotting Bed Into Art at MAMBO

Ana María Devis's first solo institutional exhibition, "From One Life Into Another. Affective Thresholds and Astonishing Matters," is on view at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO) through 26 June 2026. The centerpiece is a bacteria-infested bed left to decompose for a year after a friend's father died and his apartment was locked with a water leak. Devis documented the decay with mycologist Tatiana Sanjuán, sterilized the sheets under extreme pressure and UV light, and extracted pigments from microbial cultures to dye threads for embroidery. The exhibition includes two installations, a video, a five-panel drawing, and research photographs. In the video, a printed sheet hangs from a saman tree at her mother's home, where iguanas graze. Other works feature glass jars of human hair, used makeup wipes, and reptile skin, sewn into buglike creatures. Devis's father, an engineer turned painter, influenced her collecting of fragments. A related work by Venezuelan Informalist Elsa Gramcko, "Broken Surface" (1963), is displayed upstairs from MAMBO's permanent collection.