The Colombian artist Tina Ovalle prefers to interpret world events by drawing. For the TZ, she briefly sets her pen aside.
Zurich is sweating. The muggy air is trapped in the grey canyons of buildings along the Limmat, bringing sweat to the brows of smartly dressed people. The sunlit square in front of the Landesmuseum is deserted. Those who can find a spot of shade; others retreat into air-conditioned rooms. “I’m sitting inside,” Tina Ovalle says in a text message. In the cool half-light, then. That of all people she should prefer the noncommittal sobriety of the entrance hall to the life-giving warmth of the forecourt is somehow surprising. After all, the nature lover is used to high temperatures and humidity. Ovalle comes from Colombia. Only a few weeks ago she returned to Switzerland from a long stay in her homeland. The petite South American waves from the other end of the hall. She radiates a resilience paired with gentleness that has become rare among young people. Smiling, she sits down in a corner of the spacious café and begins to tell her story. Candidly and without frills. She knows no taboos. Why would she? She is who she is. It’s that simple.
Ovalle was born in 1994. In Bucaramanga. At least, that is what her identity papers say. Who would think of doubting it? She looks her counterpart straight in the eye with dark eyes. Nobody... Exactly. Then, after her mother’s premature death about three months ago, came the surprise. A birth certificate found by chance states she was born in 1996. What now? Ovalle shrugs. And what is true? “No idea.” Her lips curl into a smile. Her father, too, can make no sense of it. A fact that does not seem to unsettle her. Her family had lived through difficult times. Back then. The mid-1990s. In a country marked by violence. Into this turmoil little Tina was born, the youngest of three children. Exactly when doesn’t play an excessive role. Perhaps Europeans are too petty about such things. Ovalle’s whole family history resembles an incomplete puzzle with significant pieces missing. The genealogical threads often vanish into nothing. She knows little about her ancestors, except for her maternal grandmother. She came from the Syrian-Lebanese region and ran off with a Colombian in the 1950s. She never saw or heard from her parents again. The hastily arranged marriage did not last. But the Arab-born woman remained loyal all her life to the South American country to which she owed her personal freedom.
Colombia. A tough place. The gruelling, bloody struggle between the left-wing social-revolutionary guerrilla movement FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and the right-wing paramilitary groups and drug cartels left deep marks on the land and its people. She experienced this first-hand as a girl. Her mother’s father was kidnapped by the rebels, her own father often threatened. “The insurgents didn’t like that he owned a piece of land.” Reason enough to pay him one of their notorious visits from time to time. Hidden in a room, Ovalle hoped each time for a lenient outcome. What if...? She was lucky. So was her father. Others fared far worse. In places, entire communities were wiped out. Mown down by small arms. Without exception. Without mercy. And for what? For justice? Killing for peace? Ovalle thoughtfully brushes her long, dark hair out of her face. A childhood that was not exactly sheltered... “Well, you grow into that reality, you don’t know anything else...” Feelings of revenge? No. “In the end,” she says, “fate was kind to me after all.”
Even as a little girl, Tina Ovalle loved to paint. “Paper and pen are like air to me,” she admits. She lost herself for hours in her drawn fantasy worlds. Little wonder, then, that she wanted to make her calling her profession. Thanks to her tirelessly working mother – an accountant – she and her siblings were able to study. Ovalle chose film and animation. She is aware that artificial intelligence may one day call artists’ work into question. Yet she is not afraid. She trusts in the more highly developed human creativity. “What else can I do?” she says with a smile. Alongside her work as a freelance caricaturist, illustrator and tattoo artist, she now teaches film and animation herself. Online, in fact. Her students sit on the other side of the world. In Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city. So she, who first travelled to Europe at the age of 19, nonetheless remains somehow connected to her homeland.
Still, she does not want to go back. Absolutely not. Even as a teenager she dreamed of the Old Continent. Florence, Rome, Paris. “Is there anything more worth striving for, for an art lover?” Instead of Italy or France it became Germany. For the time being. Later she moved to Switzerland. Currently she commutes between Zurich and Montagnola. “Wonderful,” she raves. The perfect mix of city and country, culture and nature. Ovalle engages with the unfamiliar without prejudice and opens herself curiously to the unknown. Only that way, she says, does integration work. What does she like about Switzerland? “The reliability, the feeling of safety...” She pauses. Actually she appreciates very much about her adopted home, she muses. “The considerate treatment of people and nature, the cleanliness, orderliness, punctuality...” The Swiss have a reputation for being reserved and eccentric, but she finds them simply a little restrained. “Once you get to know them, they are open and honest.” Too many laurels for Tell’s sons and daughters... She laughs. “Oh yes,” she adds with a wink, “rösti and bratwurst, I love rösti and bratwurst.” Seriously? Claro que sí! Still, Ovalle can hardly be called naive. She does not believe in a thoroughly intact Swiss world. People are imperfect per se.
Lost in thought, the artist leafs through her newly published book Ohne Worte (“Without Words”), which consists of over 50 drawings. An illustrated collection of world events in 2025 can be read on the back cover. “Actually, I don’t enjoy dealing with politics all that much,” Ovalle admits. But closing one’s eyes to reality is not an option. So she takes an ironic look at current events and caricatures human shortcomings with a sharp pen. Greed, phone addiction, war-mongering, simple-mindedness, conformity, naivety... Palantir gets its comeuppance. As do Merz, Musk and Trump.
Ovalle rubs her bare arms. It is the air conditioning that makes her shiver. Perhaps the state of the world a little, too. One of her illustrations shows Trump and Musk and their “Scam Trails” spread on X – nothing but dubious traces. Perfectly tweeted in drawing. She smiles briefly and then looks serious again. The Colombian does not think much of Americans. “My parents’ generation hoped to be saved by Washington.” She shakes her head. The US government, she says, has never cared about people, only about mining and drilling rights, raw materials, money and power. Anyone hoping for help from the United States hopes in vain. Expecting support from outside is pointless anyway. “Change has to be brought about through our own strength.” That, however, requires expertise. With her work she wants to contribute to it. With a slight shudder, Ovalle – currently working on a children’s book planned for autumn – presses her arms against her body. At the end of the conversation, gut feeling wins out over reason after all: why freeze in the noncommittal sobriety of the entrance hall when the life-giving warmth beckons in the forecourt? After all, summer doesn’t last forever. “Oh, and by the way,” she says, finally turning her face to the sun, “I’m not going to have my birth year changed.” She places no value on artificial rejuvenation. The critical young woman wants to stay as old as she believed herself to be until recently. Because, as said, she is who she is. There is nothing to argue about. Full stop.