Anna Maria Botero: Real and Imaginary Voyages
by Christine Temin

Anna Maria Botero didn’t intend to become a sculptor. Perhaps partly as a reaction to the success of her uncle Fernando, Colombia’s most famous artist, she started in biology, working with primates in her country’s jungles. She is an animal person, living on a working farm outside Bogotá with assorted horses, cattle, dogs, and cats. She has great empathy for all of them. “Maybe this is terrible to admit,” she says, “but I feel sorrier for animals when they suffer than I do for people. Humans make their own suffering.”