The author analyses representation in the regime of Colombian art that was established at the end of the XIXth century with the consolidation of a national project. The article emphasizes the discursive and sonic characteristics of several works with relation to the regime of the Colombian Regeneration, institutionalized in the Constitution of 1886, and compares them with Ecuadorian and Cuban works of the same period. The comparison makes evident an attempt to represent an imagined national community and its subjects, specifically through the imitation of their voices and sonority. It interprets the aesthetic and literary discourse of Miguel Antonio Cano to establish relations with literary and artistic creations of the time. Finally, it hypothesizes about certain historical paradigms that continue to reproduce some of these ideas at present.