Vita Osorio Sanmartín, 28, is a visual artist, photographer and musician from Medellín, Colombia.

Her mission? To use art to create a collective memory of the thousands of people who were killed or disappeared in Medellín under the reign of drug lord Pablo Escobar and the violent wars between paramilitary groups and guerrilla forces of the 1980s and 1990s.

"Art can make us think about our reality, the sad reality in Medellín and how that can change. I want our people to remember our history through art."

Vita is outspoken about the role that art should play in a society shattered by the drug cartel violence; she was recently invited by Duke University to speak on the subject.

Vita's artwork — specifically her ongoing Sky Series photography project — is greatly influenced by the violence of the Escobar years that claimed the life of her father in the early 1990s. "I was living a happy life until my father was shot on his a way to work," says Vita, " As a young adult, I needed to make sense of all of this. I started using my father's camera; I would ride his bike and take pictures all over Medellin, mainly pictures of the sky. This process allowed me to reconstruct his memory but then I realized that I wasn't alone."

"There are thousand of mutilated families like mine. It's not all about me anymore. With art, with music, I want to reconstruct our memory and make sure this kind of violence never happens again."

When she's not riding her bicycle, drawing, sculpting or taking pictures, she teaches art and literature workshops to children at The Museum of Modern Art in Medellín and plays drums in her band Spastico.

Through all of her artistic endeavours, Vita is motivated by the desire to capture the stories of the past while helping her beloved city heal and look to the future.

To view more of Vita's artwork, you can visit her online portfolio or follow her on Instagram. And watch her Friday December 4 at 8:30 p.m. /9 p.m. NT on Interrupt This Program.