Polyphony and Symbolism in “Poemas para no olvidar”: Mural art, Visual culture, Collective Memory and Peace

Creating the collective mural “Poemas para no olvidar” -Poems against oblivion- (2025), at the National University of Colombia, brought together the voices, experiences, knowledge, and actions of young university students. It also involved the participation of those who experienced the trauma of forced displacement, in dialogue with those who are emerging and embracing their identity as artists. The mural, as a collective construction of peacebuilding action, is the embodiment of the profound relationship that connects art, memory, polyphony (c.f. Bakhtin, 2013) and symbols of visual culture to, through practice, manage forms of artistic expression capable of consolidating collective memories, identities, and the projection of humanizing futures. This study adopts the framework of Multimodal and Multimedia Critical Discourse Studies (MMCDS), centered on the semiotic axis to explore, from combined theoretical perspectives, how collective memory is questioned, constructed, safeguarded, and transformed through murals, as an expression capable of visually representing indexes, iconologies, and symbols that materialize in art. The analysis takes into account the framework of collective memory, peace action, and participatory art.