Memories and Visions of Chile

To understand the reasons for the ongoing protests in Chile, lets look back at the recently finished Venice Biennale. The projects of Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa exhibited in the Chilean Pavilion revolve around memories.

edited by: Stéphanie Hegelbach – 28.11.2019
photos: Felipe Lavin

Voluspa Jarpa showed her research project Altered Views in the Chilean pavilion. Curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio from Spain, the never before seen piece is an invitation to reflect on racism, patriarchy, economic interests and dominance as forms of colonialism.   Altered Views serves as a junction of several cases in European history between the 17^th and 20^th centuries, riddled with social expressions, ethnographic research and dominant powers, which intends to invert the exoticism of the colonized subject back to the colonizer.    The exhibition developed a narrative which established links through the revision of European History and its approach as to non-hegemonic regions, and is the result of years of research into the reality of Latin American countries through CIA declassified documents.
The exhibition path unraveled through three reversed cultural spaces/models: The Hegemonic Museum, The Subaltern Portrait Gallery and The Emancipating Opera. The Minister of Culture, Ms. Consuelo Valdés says about the team Jarpa and Rubio: "They are two extremely relevant figures representing Chile, and a work inviting reflection upon the construction of historical accounts, against a world scenario where such reviews are urgent."