Nicolás Paris (Bogotá, 1977) roots his work in experiencing, acquiring and sharing knowledge with spectators. After studying architecture at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, he worked for a number of years as a teacher in rural schools in different areas of southeast Colombia, an experience that shaped the procedural and educational side to his work. Classroom structure and teaching strategies are at the heart of his conception of art. His projects always create situations that eschew hierarchies in favour of collaborative learning, where space and time in an exhibition—seen more as a laboratory—no longer work as a closed device dominated by the creator, but act as a meeting point between similar positions in a process whose meaning is constantly changing. The usual exhibition space becomes a communal area shaped by shared desire, expectation and interaction between users: the general public, museum or gallery employees (curators, educators, etc.) and the artist himself. Since the start of his career, in 2006, Paris has understood drawing and architectural work as two key registers in his installations, which bring together a multitude of different objects and materials: from small pieces of nature to manufactured objects, video recordings and even the exhibition furniture itself. The result is a sort of personal cosmogony that is also wide open to our ability to learn by ourselves. Nicolás Paris’s artistic and educational projects try out different communication systems and relationships between art and the public; in this approach, an artistic experience doesn’t mean a final result but simply an open-ended process towards something unexpected that, as the artist himself suggests, is to open to happening when the spectator arrives, not before. Since the early years of the 21st century, he has enjoyed increasing international acclaim, with shows at events such as the Havana Bienal (2015), the Venice Biennale (2011) and the Bienal del Mercosur (2009), as well as at museums and art centres such as the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2014); the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2012); and MUSAC, León (2008). Nicolás Paris lives and works in Bogotá, where he also leads the “University of the Garage” project, a kind of house-workshop that serves as a launch pad for multidisciplinary exchanges between art, botany, cuisine, design and architecture.