BOISBUCHET RESIDENCY PROGRAMME
JULIANA DURÁN
SEASON 2025
Stones, often regarded as inert and mundane, are among the most ancient witnesses of existence. They have seen the slow unfolding of time and transformations far beyond the span of human life. Juliana Durán, a Colombian visual artist, likes to think of every stone as sacred: a vessel of memory, a keeper of knowledge, and a quiet testimony to the world’s continuity. Every Stone Deserves a Shrine emerged from this belief, as an act of reverence toward what endures and a gesture of repair toward what has been forgotten.
The project is rooted in the concepts of hierophany and the sacred versus the profane, as described by Mircea Eliade. A hierophany marks the moment when the sacred reveals itself in the material world, when an ordinary object, such as a stone, becomes a point of contact between the human and the divine. The stone, in this sense, is not passive matter but an ontological entity, a bridge between visible and invisible realms.
In the Andes, there is a belief that beings made of stone inhabited the Earth before the emergence of the sun. This mythic image of stone as ancestor and primordial being resonates deeply with Juliana’s thinking. It recalls a worldview in which matter is alive, where the sacred permeates the everyday.
“It was an enriching experience of full creative immersion, one that continues to resonate in my ongoing exploration of how ritual, memory, and material converge.”
During her residency at Boisbuchet, she created a series of shrines to honor the stones of the landscape. Her practice is deeply influenced by working with found objects, which in this context allowed her to engage with the layered stories of the site. Each object, retrieved from disuse, carried traces of the environment and its past inhabitants. Using an almost vernacular language by modifying existing materials, subtracting or adding parts, she sought to create a dialogue between the material landscape and its spiritual echoes.
Her stay at Boisbuchet allowed her not only to delve deeper into her practice, but also to learn new techniques and tools, and to see her work from fresh perspectives through exchanges with colleagues and volunteers. Every Stone Deserves a Shrine remains an evolving reflection on the sacredness of matter and the possibility of re-enchantment through acts of attention and care.
Photos : Manon Arrougé