Juan Arreaza’s career has spanned from creating a piece with the indigenous people of Colombia to having a critical part in the Netflix series One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Colombian artist now aims to use his work as a platform to raise awareness to some of the realities in his homeland with his project Sangre Blanca.

Arreaza has built a respectable career abroad, being featured in publications by the Etnollano Foundation, the International Cooperation Agency, and publishing books such as Mapiripán, Complex Colombia, and Between Songs and Cries. However, his next masterpiece aimed to tackle the very complex issue of Cocaine production and traffic in Colombia.

For this task he partnered up with the Danish Photographer and Journalist Mads Nissen, winner of the World Press photo of the year in 2015 and 2021. The two connected in Nissen’s exposition at the National Museum in Colombia. Upon mutual admiration for each other’s work, Mads invited Juan to be his main collaborator for Sangre Blanca. Arreaza says that he did not hesitate to join the project as he saw it as an opportunity to clarify some misguided representation of the sad reality created by this issue:

“What truly repelled me was watching TV series that romanticize cartel leaders as heroes, feeding audiences with a mythology that erases the real violence, the deaths, and the lasting damage left by drug trafficking.”

Sangre Blanca is raw and quite often dark, when asking Juan about this he addresses it to the desire to showcase situations that have been almost normalized as they are: obscure and simply sad. His goal is to show everything that gets destroyed by cocaine; through its production, trafficking, and unavoidable violence, while still reminding viewers of all the other aspects that make Colombia truly special, thus creating a tension that is impossible to ignore.

To accomplish this both went deep into Colombia’s coca-growing regions as well as to Copenhagen to understand the issue from the trafficking and consumption sides. Juan went as far as incorporating chemicals sorted from cocaine labs into his paintings displaying an incredible commitment to stripping down the drug issue to its core:

“I worked with potassium permanganate; an agent used in coca paste production to eliminate unwanted alkaloids and purify the substance. I used it as a water-soluble ink to paint portraits of figures connected to cocaine throughout history”

From the materials used to the techniques chose, everything in his work carries a great deal of intention:

“What drew me to this material was something that makes it beautiful and troubling at once.

When you dissolve it in water, it produces a vivid magenta; as it oxidizes, it turns sepia.

That transformation mirrors something in the coca plant itself. Sacred to many indigenous peoples across South America for centuries, considered a female plant of great power, now has its meaning stripped and distorted by what it becomes through extraction and trafficking.”

The book asks deep questions while leaving room for contemplation rather than declaring and imposing opinions. Through context and dialogue the point is made without the need of further explanation, the contrast between the painting and photographs showcase the harsh realities of drug production, distribution and consumption in a manner that is impossible to ignore. Without exaggerated imagery Sangre Blanca has a subtle way to look deeply into the issue, capturing something about humanity that is truly devastating.