KARU "The Fury of Great Love, Being a Woman"

KARU presents an intimate archive of self-representation by Las Traviesas, created between 2021 and 2024. Composed of selfies exchanged through WhatsApp—their primary space of connection and care—the installation transforms ephemeral digital gestures into a fierce affirmation of existence.

The title, given by Liana Nembaregama, speaks to the intensity of claiming womanhood on one’s own terms: the fury required to exist, the great love that sustains survival, the daily practice of becoming woman against all forces that deny this becoming.

This digital space becomes a gathering ground where trans-Indigenous femininity is performed, witnessed, and affirmed outside the violent grammars of state recognition or ethnographic documentation. Each selfie is both an everyday gesture and a political claim: I am here. I am beautiful. I am a woman. I am Emberá.

These are vernacular acts of self-authorship—makeup tutorials, new outfits, moments of joy, poses borrowed from pop culture and reimagined through Emberá aesthetics. Together they form a collective act of self-construction and an embodied timepiece, documenting transformation and refusing singular narratives. KARU insists on multiplicity: there are many ways to be an Emberá woman. Here, technology becomes a territory of belonging. The phone’s screen, once a tool of isolation, turns into a communal fire—where the fury of great love burns, radiant and real.

Las Traviesas
Single-channel video installation
15 min loop
2022