This page contains links to articles, interviews, and videos that can be incorporated into course syllabi or used for individual student research. For detailed event information, visit saic.edu/cate.
Laura Huertas Millán: Pharmakon Ecologies
Thursday, November 6, 6:00 p.m. CT
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street
Faculty can reserve tickets for their classes here.
Followed by a conversation between Laura Huertas Millán and the artist and writer Claire Pentecost, co-founder of the experimental cultural space Watershed Art & Ecology.
All CATE events will have real-time captioning (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu
Acclaimed for films as visually rich as they are thought‑provoking, Colombian‑French artist and filmmaker Laura Huertas Millán returns to CATE to present a body of work centered on the coca plant. Drawing on the concept of the pharmakon—a substance that can both poison and cure—she blends documentary, collaborative ethnography, and speculative fiction to reframe colonial legacies, Andean knowledge systems, and ecological violence.
Laura Huertas Millán is a Colombian French artist and award‑winning filmmaker whose multifaceted practice bridges visual art, cinema, and decolonial research. Drawing from ethnography, ecology, literature, and fiction, her films challenge oppressive narratives through experimental forms. She has been the subject of more than twenty solo film retrospectives internationally, and her films have screened at major festivals including the Berlin International Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Toronto International Film Festival, FIDMarseille – International Documentary Film Festival, and Doclisboa International Film Festival (Lisbon), where they have received numerous awards. Her work has also been exhibited at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Jeu de Paume (Paris), and Times Art Center Berlin. She has participated in international biennials and triennials including Liverpool Biennial, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Biennial SESC_Videobrasil (São Paulo), Videonale (Bonn), and Sharjah Biennial. In 2024, she was awarded both the AWARE Prize for mid‑career artists and the Ulrike Crespo After Nature Award. She is currently developing a feature‑length film on the history of the coca plant, extending over a decade of research between the Colombian Amazon, the United States, and Europe.
The Coca Plant and Colonialism: Laura Huertas Millán’s Cinematic Exploration of a History of Extraction
Hassan, Amany | Title Magazine | December 02, 2024
Introduction to the Labyrinth
Eileen Myles | Vdrome | 2023
Laura Huertas Millán, Fiction as a Psychotropic for Collective Healing
Mokrzycka, Ania | Clot Magazine | March 13, 2023
Laura Huertas Millán. Artista y cineasta del entre-deux*
Rueda, Amanda, and Laura Huertas Millán | Cinémas d'Amérique latine, no. 29 | p. 44–63 | 2021
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Interview with Laura Huertas Millán
Rogers, Louis | Tank TV | Spring 2020
Deconstructing Colonial Cinema with Ethnographic Fiction: Experimental Filmmaker Laura Huertas Millán Talks to Hyperallergic
Smith, Justine | Hyperallergic | December 25, 2019
Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image
by
Laura Huertas Millán in the Video Data Bank collection
SAIC users can click here to login to the VDB's educational streaming platform to watch titles by the artists above.
Conversations at the Edge Lecture Recordings
Conversation at the Edge video recordings (2016–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.