The works I am presenting are a compilation of some of the pieces I have produced in recent years in the mapuche territory. They have processes and in-situ documentation in common, and these are given material expression by multiple visual means, including video, installation, performance art, and the support of local communities.
In 2019, with Machi Jorge Quilaqueo1MachiJorge Quilaqueo: a mapuche machi (shaman, expert in natural medicine, and spiritual and religious guide) from the city of Nueva Imperial in the region of Araucanía. I travelled an ancestral route from the imposing Llaima Volcano2Llaima Volcano: located in Conguillío National Park 80 km northwest of the city of Temuco to Puerto Saavedra,3Puerto Saavedra: the colonial name of a coastal town 85 km from Temuco. The true ancestral name of this place is Konün Traytrayko Leufuor Konün Traytrayko Leufu (from the Mapuzungun: the river that runs singing), its ancestral name. This action was part of an art project, Kawün Kurra(Meeting of Stones), which is still in progress and has given rise to various pieces of art. The starting point of the project is concerned with sound or zungun, a profound and essential concept for the mapuche people, closely linked to communication with the whole, mapuzungun (the mapuche language), translated as the sound of the earth, expressing the evolution learned from nature itself. Through this idea I pursue the primeval sounds present in nature and various forms of transposition into language, such as onomatopeia, giving rise to many conversations, rituals and theories of creation from the mapuche world; all this was recorded in videos and translated into texts and transcriptions. I was following a spiritual route of knowledge suggested by the shaman, who performed many ceremonies and descriptions of the places which intensified and transformed the journey.
The video is a real record of one of the machi’s rituals, in this case involving a dialogue with a mystical entity, a protector of a place, so as to be able to gain access and ask for permission to take some stones from the beach, since these are part of its domain.
The ngen4Ngen: a spirit holding dominion over nature, whose function is to protect and maintain equilibrium and to interact with human beings.Mankian specifically protects the sea at Puerto Saavedra in the Region of Araucanía, in mapuche territory; every time the mapuches enter its domain, they must ask for permission. If they need something, they have to ask for it and give something in return, normally food, seeds or medicinal herbs, as an act of reciprocity. Moreover, what is asked for will never break the equilibrium of the place, because it is implicit in a contract of respect and spiritual relationship with the landscape, expressed in its life well lived in the ñukemapu (from the Mapuzungun: mother earth). This is the mapuche’s main atavistic fear: breaking that relationship. When that happens, the ngen withdraws and ceases to protect the place, which will gradually become empty. The effect is irreversible; it is never the same again.
Installation of raised metawes5Metawe: a mapuche ceremonial container, whose design and function are linked to fertility and containment in the broadest sense of the definition. (mapuche water jugs) that collect rainwater: a symbolic, postmodern ritual begging for water from the sky, demanding the water that was sold and privatized in the fervour of unregulated capitalism. As a result of this madness, there are whole towns in some places in Chile that have no water and depend on tankers for minimal access to this vital resource.
I toured the Lake District in southern Chile in a fruitless attempt to make video and photographic records of the native forest. My pilgrimage ended on a small estate belonging to members of a family where they had let vegetation grow for several years like a garden run wild, with very depleted, domesticated, solitary woodland. With equal difficulty I collected tools from that place, mainly searching for a representation of local anthropological territories and natural landscapes. The paradox of ubiquitous progress has turned the whole natural and cultural setting into a space of sadness and absence.
The place contained an ample range of miscellaneous things, from ingeniously ergonometric tools and implements worn by use to a landscape with a habitat rich in layers: mystical beings, healers and daring shamans; a variety of fauna, such as pumas, kodkods, foxes and hummingbirds… and other less common animals, such as the cuchivilu, the piuchen and the camahueto,6Cuchivilu, piuchen, camahueto: part of the mythological fauna of southern Chile. Cuchivilu (from the Mapuzungun: snake-pig); piuchen (from the Mapuzungun: to dry people); camahueto: a fantastic animal in the form of a calf or kid, with a horn on its head, which explains rough terrain, as well as rivers and springs. among others, which filled an imagined and mystical landscape. There was a wealth of indigenous knowledge and cultural imaginaries, and daily events that posed countless questions in the desire for a magical understanding of the world. On the other hand, nature enfolded it and imposed its rules and taboos; the landscape unrelentingly asserted its authority over the hegemonic scale, while maintaining a relationship of clear reciprocity.
This landscape, which was once a paradise and now contrasts with the one I remember as a child, has lost its ancestral traces and mystical perceptions. Now the endemic landscape has been prostrated by repressive actions against the environment and the fracturing of a cultural context; this landscape has been redesigned in a grid of private property and industrial activity which makes it difficult to rectify the problem. Manual tools have been lost in the demented scale of production and are hard to trace; nowadays all you can see and reproduce by visual means is what has been eclipsed by the flourishing of stupidity and all the evils of progress. Deforestation has led to the native forest being replaced by pine and eucalyptus in an upsurge of euphemistic legalized systems, such as thinning and selling by the cord, a way of stripping away the biodiversity of the forest in bulk, leaving only small traces of trees and national parks, limited to a melancholy image of an evocation of trees.
Werken7Werken: the title of the work which represented Chile at the 57th Venice International Biennale. The word Werken comes from Mapuzungun and corresponds to a very important member of the mapuche community: a messenger, a herald, a politician with the power of oratory, and an adviser to the chief of the community. is a ritual and territorial image of mapuche culture, collectively constructed by many communities all over Chile between Santiago and Puerto Montt. It also expresses the awakening of the nerve centre of ancestral memory, the great mass of indigenous migration which reached the big city throughout the first half of the twentieth century; this migrant population became labourers and domestic service workers, but their grandchildren now maintain urban mapuche communities, where I viewed this work and saw a kollong8Kollong: a mystical entity that protects the machi in mapuche rituals, personified in ancient times by a member of the community of unknown identity. The kollong is an enigmatic, theatrical character who brings great joy, as well as discipline, to the ritual. for the first time.
From the Lof Kiñe pu liwen9Lof Kiñe pu liwen (from the Mapuzungun: new dawn community): an urban mapuche community, which came into being in the mid-1990s. It is among the most representative of the mapuche cultural renaissance in the major cities of Chile. urban mapuche community in the Commune of La Pintana, 10Commune of La Pintana: one of the many extremely poor municipalities on the outskirts of the city of Santiago, where the population is mostly mapuche and of mixed race. networking and connections were organized, with the very important participation of the Lonko11Lonko: head of a lof or community. of the community, Osvaldo Cheuquepan, both in making masks and in links with artists in the south of the country; this gave rise to a remarkable experience on the ground and the participation of many woodcarving artists who produced real masks or kollongs that are used in the rituals.
Werken graphically represents a ritual in which the kollongs act as a mystical entity protecting the community, made visible by the historical and epic lineage, dancing around their own omnipresence at the speed of a purrun[.mfn]Purrun: a mapuche ceremonial dance[/mfn]
This work is also a territorial milestone as another paradigm of the existence of a people, a latent image in Chile and what it potentially is, even if its oligarchical structure and colonial trauma deny it.
Bernardo Oyarzún – Biography
Los Muermos, Los Lagos Region, 1963. I live and work in Colicheu, in the commune of Cabrero that belongs to the Biobío region in Chile. A visual artist, I obtained a degree in Fine Arts from Universidad de Chile. I represented Chile at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. I have exhibited my work in twenty-five solo shows in Chile and abroad and in more than forty international exhibitions, twenty-four biennials outside Chile and over forty group exhibitions in Chile. I have completed eight residencies: Auckland, New Zealand, 2016; San Pedro de la Paz, Biobio Region, Chile, 2017; Stuttgart, Germany, 2009; University of Harvard, Boston, USA, 2010; a Guarani village in São Miguel das Missões, Brazil, 2011; Medellin, Colombia, 2011; Marseilles, France, 2009; and the Nelson Garrido Photography Residency in Valparaíso, Chile, 2010. Grants and awards include: 2011 Altazor Media Arts Prize; Art Forum Competition, Harvard, 2008; six FONDART scholarships; First Prize at the 2002 Arts and Literature Competition. My works have been featured in over sixty art catalogues and books, and my works are included in the following collections: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, DAROS Latino America, Blanton Museum; Chile Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage; CCU Collection and Ca.Sa Collection.
