Cristo Hoyos’s Farotas Painting Sparks Debate on Art and Structural Racism in Colombia

Cristo Hoyos, a Colombian artist from Talaigua, created a painting in the 1990s depicting the Farotas dance, a tradition where men dress in women's clothing and dance to rebel against colonial masters. The work became the center of a political controversy when Colombia's president dismissed it as not art during a public speech in Cartagena. In response, writer Gabriel Moreno Reza published an op-ed defending Hoyos, arguing that the painting is a powerful expression of Afro-Colombian resistance and a critique of structural racism. Moreno Reza cites statistics: the 2018 national census reduced the Afro-descendant population count by 30.8%, 19.8% of that population lives in multidimensional poverty, and in 2024 the Ombudsman's Office certified 105 displacements, most in black territories like Nariño (41) and Cauca (16). He references philosophers Saidiya Hartman and Achille Mbembe to frame the ongoing legacy of slavery. Hoyos also founded the Museo Zenú de Arte Contemporáneo in the early 2000s, a nomadic museum without a permanent collection that has hosted works by artists like Beatriz González. The op-ed argues that the president's dismissal reflects elite control over black bodies and territories, and that Hoyos's work functions as political art that unsettles power.