Finca Santahelena

Santa Helena is a 10-hectare family farm located in the Sabana de Bogotá, in Cajicá. A wide territory of open countryside within a diverse and dynamic area, where rural tradition, industrial memory, and contemporary development coexist.

The farm is more than 100 years old and is a living example of traditional rural life on the savanna. The century-old house is surrounded by gigantic trees, with an open view of the mountains and bordering the Bogotá River, which in this stretch flows clean.

The place has a strategic location: 5 minutes from Fontanar Shopping Center, 10 minutes from the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá, and 50 minutes from Bogotá with very good transport links. This combination creates a unique environment: isolation and inspiration in the countryside, with easy access to the city.

Santa Helena is in an active transformation process toward artistic residency and a cultural laboratory.

The estate's former marmalade factory now functions as an artistic studio. In the house, instruments such as piano, guitars, accordion, tiple, and requinto coexist, and music is a natural part of daily life.

Additionally, the territory hosts an active temazcal. I have been a temazcal practitioner for more than 20 years, and periodically gatherings are held that include ceremonies, music, collective cooking, ceramics, dance, and dialogue with Indigenous knowledge holders from different regions of Colombia.

The volunteer arriving at Santa Helena participates in a developing cultural ecosystem: a space where art, territory, memory, music, and community life intertwine.

Santa Helena is a project that I mainly lead, as an audiovisual artist and cultural manager. I live on the estate as a space for living, creation, and cultural transformation.

My daughter accompanies me on weekends and participates in the daily and creative dynamics of the house, which has a family and close spirit.

In daily life we have a domestic worker who cares for cleaning the communal spaces and prepares lunch, which allows life in the house to have an organized and welcoming base.

We also receive occasional support: gardening assistants who work on maintaining the grounds, and partners of a riding academy who come once a week to ride and care for the horses.

On weekends the space becomes active with the arrival of people who participate in the temazcal and in cultural encounters associated with this process.

The volunteers will be treated as guests of the house and as part of the creative team, under a reciprocity framework.

Santa Helena is a lived, vibrant house, where we seek that those who arrive feel welcomed, respected, and trusted. We are interested in enabling them to develop their creative abilities, share their experience and nourish with their presence the cultural process being gestated here.