Group Exhibition
Artist: Claudia Suárez Jansson, Estefanía Muñoz Cabrera, Paula Sayago Lundin
Curatorship: Alma Molina Carvajal
Audiovisual: Rodolfo Lucero Figueroa
Year : 2022-2023
How does Space transform into a territory? How does this extra-human territory connect with the local?
This exhibition is the result of a creative process that connects visual arts with astronomy. It situates itself in the realm of the intimate and personal, leaving out the common focus on the spectacular use of technologies or experimental languages.
Three artists from the Coquimbo Region (Chile) worked by reusing decommissioned aluminum plates from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and specifically the APOGEE 2S survey, conducted at the Las Campanas Observatory and concluded in 2021.
Based on the questions, objectives, and techniques posed by APOGEE, the artists expressed their own imagery and concerns.
Claudia Suárez Jansson embroiders the plates, emulating the way they were originally used (connecting optical fibers in their holes). She connects with APOGEE’s main mission: to create a map of the Milky Way. Thus, she shows us a water map of her local territory, prompting reflections on how territories are constructed and the powers involved. She also illustrates an endemic flower that resembles a star and grows in a structure similar to a galaxy. This flower is threatened by the reduction and destruction of the lands where it grows, presenting new tensions regarding the formation of territories.
Estefanía Muñoz Cabrera connects with the big question about the origin of the Milky Way and the stellar archaeology that the APOGEE survey conducts to uncover her own Diaguita indigenous lineage and show both her relationship with this culture and its connection with space, the stars, and death.
Paula Sayago Lundín returns to her personal and biographical relationship with observing the night sky to develop visual poems that speak to us about the origin and life of galaxies, forming an alternative narrative to the hundreds of scientific investigations and the thousands of data points the survey has collected regarding the history and future of the Milky Way.
Along with the artists’ works, we also wanted to capture the creation process through a mini-documentary by the artist Rodolfo Lucero.
The exhibition includes scientific information and details about the survey and the creation process, in a mediation piece/installation that aims to encourage visitors’ reflections.
Finally, through the images evoked by the artists and the available scientific information, we hope that everyone can connect the territories of the Galaxy with the personal and local territories that shape and construct us.
Exhibition and project catalogue (SPANISH)
