Ukhu Pacha (2019) is a significant piece in her career, marking her first large-scale installation as a visual artist alongside her established work in filmmaking. This project began with the discovery of an old album at her grandmother’s house, filled with objects, photographs, and letters from the family’s past. This sparked conversations with relatives, inspiring her to research and reconstruct her family tree as an act of empowerment. With a background in filmmaking, Camila brings a cinematic quality to the installation, creating a mise-en-scène ambiance with threads that connect to a central frame, evoking a web of history and memory. The unfinished weaving patterns hint at South America’s incomplete and fragmented narratives—stories of missing parts and forgotten histories. Yet, through the soil, memory is preserved.
Originally titled Resilience, the work draws on the Andean concept of Ukhu Pacha, the world where ancestors reside. Through this piece, Camila intervenes in history books about her birthplace and ancestral land, which narrate ancestral wisdom as well as the pain and violence endured by her forebears. She begins by painting the pages with the earth and mud from her homeland, embedding a deep connection to the land itself. On these pages, she then embroiders the names of five generations of her ancestors in golden thread.
In collaboration with musician Holman Álvarez, Camila composed a song for each ancestor, with melodies inspired by the musical traditions of the regions where her ancestors were born. Throughout the space, voices sing the names of 15 family members, filling the installation with a poignant tribute to her lineage. At the center hangs a Tunjo, a woven figure crafted as an offering to the gods, symbolizing her plea for the healing of historical wounds and the restoration of ancestral wisdom.