OMNI TOXICA | Paula Chaves Bonilla

OMNI TOXICA is a journalistic and forensic performative ritual on the history of Coca and how it passed from being a green, sacred, medicinal plant into a whitewashed, capitalist, toxic product: cocaine. The project borrows strategies from journalism, spiritism, narco culture, alchemy and activism to construct a dystopian laboratory. Here the politics of death behind what we call the Coca-Cocaine-Cola complex are revealed as the continuation of a neo-colonial order in place. In OMNI TOXICA the coca plant machiavellizes its own court case while shedding light on the incoherent gap between justice and legality, between wellness and toxicity that overshadows this whole multibillion-dollar industry.

About Paula Chaves Bonilla

Paula Chaves Bonilla (she/they) is a Colombian artist and activist based in Amsterdam. She has a background in contemporary dance, choreography, theatre and circus and now works as a dance and theatre maker across these disciplines. Her artistic research explores embodiments of denouncement, resistance and disobedience within contexts of censorship and surveillance.

Since 2015, Paula has been creating a series of works on the proximity between contemporary art production & neoliberal capitalism, which resulted in: Paraart (2015), Against the Wall (2017) and Omni Toxica (2019).

Paula Chaves Bonilla is currently a House Artist at Veem House for Performance, artist in residency at the Creative Crossroads program within the Life Long Burning dance network, member of the ‘Climate Justice Code for artists and art institutions’ (a project initiated by Casco) and co-founder of Papaya Kuir (an Intersectional feminist collective for & by Trans & Queer Lesbian Latinx Asylum seekers/Migrant artists in The Netherlands).