Traces of human movement can be found within the Museo Santa Clara, which was formerly the church of the Royal Monastery of Santa Clara. While a cloistered life is typically associated with stillness and isolation, this space has served as a refuge and a site for journeys, departures, and expulsions since its origins in the seventeenth century.

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During the colonial period, individuals from various backgrounds and regions came together within these walls, some not always by choice. Evidence of their presence can be found in the skeletal remains preserved in the crypt, among other artifacts. Bioarchaeological studies indicate that these remains include individuals of European, Indigenous, and African ancestry, highlighting the population movements that influenced Santafereña society.

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The convent community was connected to migration, as the Clarisas (Poor Clare nuns) who lived here were descendants of Spaniards who had arrived in the Americas. The history of this place is also marked by two significant events. As part of the establishment of the convent in 1630, three nuns—Damiana de San Francisco, Isabel de la Trinidad, and Juana de Jesús—from the Convento del Carmen were brought here in a ceremonial procession. This procession brought together civil and ecclesiastical authorities, as well as a large part of the city’s population. Centuries later, on February 3, 1863, the cloistered life of the nuns abruptly changed when they were forced to leave the monastery permanently. This was in accordance with a decree ordering the confiscation and secularization of Church property, issued by the government of President General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera.

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In response to these physical and historical traces of migration and displacement, Colombian-American artist Bernardo Vallarino presents Huellas. Evidencia de valor y vida (Traces. Evidence of Worth and Life). The exhibition emerges from one of the themes that runs throughout his artistic practice: human displacement, understood not as an isolated experience, but as a condition shared by societies and communities across different periods and geographies, shaping the cultures they have created. In this exhibition, Vallarino focuses his attention on the specific circumstances of those who, confronted with adversity, have been forced to leave the places where they were born and embark on new paths.

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The exhibition brings together two complementary levels of presence. The first is related to the stories, garments, and other materials incorporated into the works. Connected to specific people and places, these elements retain the traces of those who wore or owned them, allowing individual experiences to emerge amid the immense scale of global migration. The second relates to the physical marks the artist has stamped on the installations, sculptures, and images: a repeated pattern of SOS (• • • — — — • • •), the international distress signal in Morse code. Technical and objective in nature, and recognizable across languages and cultures, this sign establishes a global connection between the individual stories behind each call for help and other experiences of movement and adversity in diverse contexts.

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Throughout the exhibition, references to Christian symbolism in Vallarino’s work further strengthen the artwork’s connection to the history, architecture, and iconography of the former Santa Clara church, as well as to the shared belief in the sacredness of life. At the same time, they evoke the spiritual strength of those who, in the past and present, have undertaken journeys of displacement and exodus.

As we move through this space, where historical memory intersects with contemporary perspectives, a question emerges:

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What evidence of the many migrations that have shaped history is present in my own life?