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The braids of the quinileja find a close visual counterpart in the roots of the canelo, which lived underground for thirty-plus years until a recent storm in Chiloé torn them out of the soil. Both partially mirror the satellite images presented by Voluspa Jarpa of the Andes mountain range, and the circular shapes within the range bear a visual relationship to the inner rings of the hovering canelo trunk, which in turn trace the successive years of the tree’s life. Jarpa further expands the comparison between what looms and what submerges in her digital images of the mountains, repeatedly folded over themselves in what appears to a self-embrace, until they sink and disappear in the Chiloé archipelago, only to emerge once more in Antarctica. From top to bottom, the Andes are converted into a movement of concentric rings, their compressed geological strata a crust, to be read across space and time.
Jarpa’s prior attention to the Andes’ myriad range of cultures generated, among other works, her well-known Emancipation Opera (2017), which was performed by people who live and work in close relationship with nature in the central mountain range. Along with Emancipation Opera, a recent video made by Violeta Molineux, which records a recent collective action by women in Quellón, is also included in the present selection. In addition, Jarpa’s works at Capilla Azul expand on her previous investigations by incorporating graphic visualizations of the topology of mountains and volcanoes alongside the stratification of patterns of social unrest in the Andean region — as if together, nature and society find a point of confluence in images of containment and eruption.
The canelo, sacred to Mapuche spirituality, has been salvaged and brought inside the chapel, carrying with it a sense of life constantly striving to expand: the inner bark covered by spots, bumps and cracks, and the roots that were recently sunk in the subsoil, growing in direct proportion to the strength and stability that the tree requires in its quest to move ever upward. The roots remind us of everything that we can’t see beneath our feet, hidden from sight, nourishing and irrigating life in the earth, emerging and sinking at the same time.
Texto por Dan Cameron y Ramón Castillo
En esta ocasión, Alfredo Jaar y Osvaldo Güineo, exhiben en la Capilla Azul haciendo visible su historia, arquitectura y función anterior. La presencia de la memoria de los sacramentos y otros actos de fe comunitaria, y una piedad personal que llenó este espacio por casi toda su existencia, convive con su función expositiva actual, configurando una secuencia de lecturas dinámicas, acertadas, diversas y/o superpuestas. Esta pequeña capilla, cada tres meses se puebla de obras de arte que actúan como una "tabula rasa" (borrón y cuenta nueva), cada vez que se presenta una nueva exposición. La imaginación no tiene que esforzarse demasiado, por repoblar el espacio debido a su apariencia, ya que a través de las diversas obras realizadas por las y los artistas, de una u otra manera, se evocan las imágenes, formas, colores y música ceremonial que desapareció, y con ella el coro de “amén” murmurado en la celebración o el recogimiento.
