ReVista :: Chile :: The Other Chile: Art and Literature

Chile

A Changing Country
Spring 2004

Chilean Art

Between Reality and Memory
Beatriz Huidobro Hott

Chile's contemporary artists do not cling to any particular ideology. Rather, this new generation of artists seek to understand the recent past without a sense of guilt or victimization. They look to the future with a critical and constructive view, without hatred.

Only a few artists focus on the political and social context. Instead, some vent their criticism on the economic model, the free market and the consumer society. An example is the well-received 1999 exhibition by Bruna Truffa and Rodrigo Cabezas at the National Fine Arts Museum, Si vas para Chile (If you go to Chile), taking its title from a well-known traditional folk song and making fun of consumer culture.Later, the artists produced another exhibition, Si vas para el Mall (If you go to the mall).

While many artists mock the consumer society and the search for easy and quick satisfaction, few concern themselves with the poverty, unemployment, and social and economic inequality that is part of modern Chile. The degree of social consciousness in art in Chile has varied in intensity over time. At the beginning of the last century, the so-called Generación del 13 used painting to highlight social concerns by depicting local customs. An incipient muralist movement in the 1940s, stimulated by the Chilean sojourn of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, and the 1960s' "art of denunciation" somehow contributed several artistic ways of interpreting the aftermath of the Pinochet coup (see sidebar).

Yet social concerns have often been on the periphery. In addition to the contemporary mockery of consumerism, much of today's artistic expression of social concerns deals with lifestyle and identity. The liberation of morés and customs greatly influences artistic production. Topics such as nudity, eroticism and homosexuality are no longer forbidden. There is a resurgence of conceptual art, in which theorical discourse has great relevance. These trends are supported by a great number of art schools that are very keen on new aesthetical expressions. Painting does not escape the conceptualists' scrutiny; it is often questioned as a means of artistic expression.

At the same time, technological developments have made it possible to incorporate new elements of artistic expression. The use of interactive multimedia has attracted a considerable number of young Chilean artists who explore the possibilities of combining painting, photography, found objects and video in their installations. There is an interweaving of elements and artistic expression. A crisscross of traditional and conceptual changes occurs as a product of a globalized world.

This globalized vision may also account for a number of ecological groups that have recently appeared on the artistic scene. The clay art of Zinnia Ramírez, Ana María Wienecken, Leo Moya and Norma Ramírez reflect the increased use of organic materials as part of this newfound ecological sensibility.

In a sense, this ecological movement is a subtle return to Chile's artistic past, but with a twist. Chilean art began with landscaping artists who worked in the European tradition with an elitist bent, as Chileans searched for their own identity in the last century. These early landscape artists showed little interest in Chile's ancestral civilization, reflecting the relative absence of indigenous culture and pre-Columbian past compared to other Latin American countries. This attitude contrasts with some of the new ecological artists that use their art for the vindication of ancient cultures, particularly the Mapuche.

The recycling of discarded materials evokes both ecology and meager resources. The newspaper constructions of Andres Vio are a good example of this trend, creating an intertwining of contemporary art's uncertainties and forms of expression related to Chile's living conditions.

Other artists working with a different type of recycled materials have developed a "memory of the past" by searching for lost and found objects. Carlos Montes de Oca, for example, takes his findings out of context and presents them with poetic texts in boxes of impeccable craftsmanship. Some of his latest works have included interventions in urban spaces with small tents which reference the fragility and lack of protection of the human being.

Amid all these changes and experimentation, a very special type of inward-looking Chilean painting still persists, displaying great imagination in alluding to a dream-like world where timeless landscapes are filled with eccentric human figures and illogical objects. Most predominant among these artists are Mario Gómez, Edwin Rojas, and Lorenzo Moya. These artists recoil to a private subjective world, which they splash on the canvass with rich imagination and dexterity.

Despite its diversity, Chilean art is now only beginning to become an integral part of the international and domestic scene. The scarcity evoked by Vio and other recyclers is also an artistic commentary on the difficulty in catapulting contemporary Chilean art into established international circuits due to the lack of resources. Until the 1950s and early 1960s, Chile had been insulated from the international art world.

Within Chile itself, one can see that there is a growing relationship between art and the general public, as attendance to galleries and museums increases. Exhibition spaces-private and public- have increased as well. The opportunity for viewers to permit themselves moments of confrontation and reflection with art has greatly expanded.

However, much of the general public has difficulty understanding the complex theoretical proposals of conceptual art, neither grasping the codes nor possessing the necessary facts. As pointed out by Tomás Andreu, director of the avant-garde art space Galería Animal, some art dealers draw on the seduction of material, shock impact and the surprise element as way of attracting the public's attention.

Nevertheless, art is becoming an integral part of the urban scene. Large scale sculptures, not only in Santiago but also in Chile's provinces, bring art to urban spaces. Among the prominent sculptors that have taken part in these projects are Osvaldo Peña, Sergio Castillo, Francisco Gacitúa, Aura Castro, José Vicente Gajardo and Alejandra Ruddoff.

Chilean art may not necessarily incorporate a social message, but the very act of incorporating art into public life is a social statement. Within the overall cultural framework of Chile, successive democratic governments put great effort into elaborating a cultural policy, encompassing all artistic tendencies and expressions. The recently created Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Council for the Arts and Culture) has created great optimism within Chile's cultural community.

Private corporations-in keeping with the current free market economic model- continue to play a major role not only in financing artistic endeavors but in the promotion and diffusion of art. The role of private enterprise in fomenting art began for the most part during the military regime when the dictatorship shied from fostering cultural expression.

During the period of the dictatorship, an art market developed in Chile. New galleries opened up and the public timidly began to acquire contemporary art. The patrons who financed exhibitions and contests were the large corporations of the private sector, looking with favor on those artists who did not overtly politicize their works.

Today, Chile's democratic governments seek a mixed participation between the public and the private sector for all sorts of art, socially conscious or not. Art expressions in today's Chile are as diverse as the perceptions of every artist vis-à-vis his or her own life experience. Art will be the mirror that will rescue and preserve Chile's cultural memory.

Beatriz Huidobro Hott is an art historian and curator in Santiago.