Narrativas gráficas de memoria preventiva y resistencia en las huertas urbanas de Bogotá

Abstract

This Research-Creation project emerges from a concrete territorial urgency: the possible disappearance of two spaces of memory and agroecological resistance in Bogotá. The urban gardens Alison and Yuliana Samboní, located in the Parque de los Hippies and Parque del Perro in the Chapinero district, transcend the practice of planting to operate as living monuments that honor victims of gender-based and state violence, and that habitually sustain networks of collective care, food sovereignty, and community pedagogy. Their existence, however, is precarious: the institutional authorization protecting Huerta Alison expires on July 8, 2026, with no guarantee of renewal, and Parque de los Hippies faces the threat of reconversion for the construction of a parking lot. Faced with this condition of urgency, graphic design in this project takes on a role that goes beyond visual communication, functioning as a tool of preventive memory. Through ethnographic immersion and collaborative work with the collective Rescatando Raíces, two main deliverables were developed — a dual-reading documentary photobook and a series of three urban intervention posters — built from the materials, voices, and aesthetics of the territory itself. Both pieces seek to make visible the narratives of memory, resistance, and care held by these gardens, and to ensure that these narratives persist beyond the physical and temporal limits of the space. The document that follows is organized into four major sections. The first establishes the problem, the research question, and the objectives guiding the work. The second situates the project in conversation with references on graphic design as a tool of historical memory, graphic documentalism as a form of resistance, and social cartography as a community practice, and builds the theoretical framework that articulates design decisions with permacultural philosophy, urban imaginaries, and visual ethnography. The third describes the project's methodological and aesthetic approach, and details the creation process for each piece. The fourth analyzes the process's findings and presents the conclusions the work yields on the role of graphic design in contexts of territorial urgency and community memory.