New exhibitions

On Saturday, September 2, the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA) presents two new exhibitions, and a new selection of works from the Museum collection.

Muros Blandos. Ser entre bordes
Pia Arke, Oreet Ashery, Asco, Sebastián Calfuqueo, Colectivo Charco, Mujeres Creando, Javier Téllez and Vladimir Tomic

Curated by Daniela Berger, Lily Hall and Mette Kjærgaard Præst

Muros Blandos. Ser entre bordes (Soft Walls. Being between borders) is an international group exhibition that aims to open up a conversation about notions of migration, otherness and possibilities of transformation. It brings together eight artists and collectives from different geographic locations, socio-political perspectives and moments in time who share an impulse to question social constructions of power. Together these disparate voices find points of confluence and divergence, creating a series of layered conversations which audiences are invited to join.

By inhabiting states of being not one or the other, but being in between, the exhibition acknowledges that categories such as nationality, territory, class, body, gender and sexuality are inherently mutable. Each new commission responds to the context of the museum and the current political climate in Chile, extending beyond the walls of the institution. Meanwhile, the existing works included in the show, whilst created in response to situations of migration, marginalisation or exile elsewhere, contribute to the conversation with new perspectives. Drawing on the ideas of Brazilian theoretician and pedagogue Paulo Freire, the exhibition poses questions rendered urgent by increasingly divisive politics around the globe: can the state of being in-between borders, which is becoming a reality for more and more people, become a powerful position of resistance? What are the possibilities of questioning the roles of oppressor and oppressed, towards a transformation of these dynamics?

Pálido Fuego
Mariana Najmanovich

Pálido Fuego (Pale Fire) is a solo presentation of new work by Mariana Najmanovich. Placing notions of play in the foreground, for Najmanovich Pálido Fuego becomes a biopolitical device which stems from the artist´s visual research around past and present images of terrorist organisations. At MSSA, Najmanovich sets the stage for a critical, raw reflection on the representation of war and its actors, with her objects of games and ‘collectables’ based on the capitalised banality of terrorism and military training. Throughout her research, Najmanovich uses photographs as reference material and then manipulates the originals with a range of pictorial and aesthetic strategies. Scenes of war and official politics, which are part of our collective memories, appear as a confusion of bodies transformed into ever-new configurations. Ultimately, Pálido Fuego reflects on psychological debasement in contexts of violence, fatally linked to the drive of contemporary markets.

Utopía y Crisis. Colección MSSA
Anders Åberg, Gracia Barrios, Adigio Benítez, Rafael Canogar, Ricardo Carpani, Alberto Carol, Ernesto Deira, Hugo Demarco, Antonio Dias, José Luis García Ibáñez, Pablo Genovés, Gontran Guanaes Netto, Enno Hallek, Anthony Hill, Lars Hillersberg, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Alfredo Jaar, Zdzisław Józef Jurkiewicz, Kimmo Kaivanto, Ewert Karlsson, Wojciech Krzywoblocki, Claude Lazar, Ali Silem, Leonel López Nussa, Aldo Paparella, Paul Peter Piech, Alfredo Portillos, Ulf Rahmberg, Josefina Robirosa, Jerzy Rosołowicz, Jorge de Santa María, Ali Silem, Michel Sohier, Frank Stella, and Esteban Joaquín Torres

Curated by Caroll Yasky

With a selection of artworks created between 1967 and 2010, this annual exhibition presents works from the Museum's collections which offer challenging points of view regarding various crises in political and ideological models, as well as directing a particular gaze towards the representation of utopias. These works operate from multiple and diverse geographies, experiences and creative languages. The selection of works in the exhibition has been renewed for this second semester at MSSA, with the aim of expanding views on the question of utopia, which is a key concept in the origins of the Museo de la Solidaridad and the formation of its collections.

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