- At the invitation of the Dutch Foundation Global Art Affairs Foundation (GAA), the Chilean gallery is part of the exhibition Personal Structures, with the exhibition Cruz del Sur by artist Ismael Frigerio.
- With the award of a Fondart project of international circulation, the participation of the Santa Rosa Factory in the Venice Biennial marks the culmination of an important trajectory that has been oriented in recent years to internationalize the visual arts of our country.
After participating in several international visual arts events, including ARCO art fairs in Spain, Este Arte de Uruguay and Art Lima in Peru, among others, the Santa Rosa Factory is participating in the exhibition Personal Structures, a project of International art started in 2002 by the Dutch artist René Rietmeyer. In 15 years the foundation has organized innumerable exhibitions, a period in which it has always been part of the Venice Biennale, with artists such as Mariana Abramovic, Carl Andre, Joseph Kosuth, Lee Ufan, Ma Jun, Tony Matelli, TatsuoMiyajima, Peter Halley, Rene Rietmeyer, Yuko Sakurai, Sasaki, Seo, Lawrence Weiner, Maik Wolf, Xing Xin, Zou Cao, On Kawara, among others. The last year was Yoko Ono the most outstanding artist of the project.
In this context, the GAA Foundation invited the Santa Rosa Art Factory to propose a project to participate in the exhibition “Personal Structures”, being “Cruz del Sur”, by the artist Ismael Frigerio, the project that is exposed. “We decided to propose this artist for his high relevance in the scene of the visual arts of Chile, his constant reflection and vast trajectory. Frigerio’s work, especially since the middle of the eighties until today, has been based on the concepts of territory, memory and identity, fitting perfectly with the themes proposed by GAA “, says Carolina Musalem, Director of Factoría Santa Rosa.
The work presented in Venice relieves the historical awareness of the territory, by means of the rescue and visual compilation of the memory that is housed in the northern area, specifically in the nitrate territory. It is a reflection on the conformation of identity and national memory, understanding the landscape, history and memory as territory, time and identity. It conceives and compiles the economic, ecological and social history of the country through the analogy and metaphor of the materiality of the work. By means of several supports it makes an incision like a scalpel on the body of our mother country and the exploitation of raw materials (in a past the saltpeter and at the moment the copper) and the concentration of income of the country in a single region.
These concepts unfold in various facilities that have already been exposed in different spaces over time: Ceremony of Memory (Hunter College, New York, 1992); (Gabriela Mistral Museum, Santiago, 1997) and Monumental Anatomy (Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, 1999). Its main thread is America, and particularly Chile, and its history of sacrifice and resistance since the arrival of the Spaniards. That is why the title of the show, Cruz del Sur, invokes one of the essential symbols for both Catholics and various indigenous cultures of America. It also serves as a metaphor for expressing the fact that each American people carry its own cross. In the case of Chile, Frigerio reflects on one of them, the dictatorship of Pinochet, and the tortures and disappearances left behind. Thus, one of the facilities exposes what happened in the prison camp Chacabuco located in the salitrera office of the same name in northern Chile, declared a National Monument in 1971, during the Allende government where he was tortured and murdered.
Cruz del Sur will be exhibited in the Mora Palace, in the historic center of Venice, until November 2017.
Ismael Frigerio is a visual artist. He studied at the University of Chile, settled in New York from 1981 to 1993, where he developed his work as a painter. For 12 years he developed a work in relation to the American continent which was very successful in the United States, showing this work in important spaces, like the Museum of Brooklyn NY, AL Museum of Los Angeles, Museum of Houston and several others. Part of his work is in the Museum of the Neighborhood, Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, and Museum of Engraving of New Jersey. On his return to Chile, he worked with a group of anthropologists on the nation, history and territory. Its last great exhibition was made in the Museum of Visual Arts, obtaining the prize of the critic, work that was realized based on the territorial memory, and familiar memory. The supports used come from what he calls mother tongue painting, crossing analog photography and developing audiovisual and video work in digital.
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