BIO
Studies & experience
First large installation
Fractal Manifesto
Current Projection

Cesar Henao’s body of work threads the needle between art and science.

He is a painter, sculptor and visual artist who graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He received the highest distinction unanimously awarded by a jury led by the Belgian kinetic sculptor Pol Bury.

That same year he conceived his first large-scale ephemeral installation in response to the ecological and human catastrophe caused by the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which dispersed a cloud of highly polluting radioactive particles throughout Europe.

To frame the symbolic value conveyed by his installation, he chose the archaeological site of an ancient pre-Columbian “lost city”, nestled in the mountains in the middle of Colombia's subtropical rainforest, 1,300 metres above the cliffs.

"Ciudad Perdida" or Teyuné, built by the Tayrona tribe of the Caribbean, 650 years before Machu Picchu in Peru, and abandoned in the 16th century due to the violence of the Spanish conquistadors, was later and for several generations for their descendants, the Koguis, the Arhuacos, the Wiwas and the Kankuamos, the secret sanctuary where they celebrated their beliefs in the coexistence of nature and man as a single being.

To actualize that meaning and alert about the invisible dangers of an uncontrolled technology, César Henao, breaking with the artistic practices of the moment, uses the first Earth-imaging satellite SPOT-Image1 as an integral part of his installation and to locate it from space.

With only two months in orbit before the Chernobyl catastrophe and still in its testing phase, this satellite was the only capable instrument of safely restoring the first photo of the heart of the nuclear reactor after the explosion, due to the high level of radioactivity it propagated.

In the installation, by their ephemeral nature and the use of satellite technology to observe man-made disasters, the two catastrophes are objectively linked : human error in the nuclear power plant and the exodus and extinction of populations due to greed.

From the Fractals of Benoît Mandelbrot to René Thom’s catastrophe theory, or Prigogine‘s dissipative structures to the Chaos theory or String theory, César Henao projects today through his new creations an enriched vision of his practices and his multiple experiences.

An asset that he has developed constantly since his first works and interventions with the satellite and that expresses his keen interest in understanding and reacting as an artist to the impact of the technological and systemic advent in our modern societies.

César Henao is also one of the signatories of the Fractal Manifesto assumed by the members of this group and which was presented to the press and the public at number 229 of the Art Press magazine in France.

He lives and works in France and exhibits internationaly.