In late 1979, Chilean artist Elías Adasme began an artwork titled A Chile, in which he establishes a metaphorical relationship between his body and the nation’s map, through interventions in public and private urban spaces. The result is a work composed of five photographic modules that document these interventions.
The first module Corporal intervention of a private space shows the artist in his studio, barefoot, with his nude torso, hanging upside down besides the map. In the second module, Corporal intervention of a public space (the strongest image of the set), the action is showed again, but this time in a pole at the Salvador Metro Station in Santiago. The specific location chosen for this risky intervention is very significant. The name of the station: “Salvador” recalls that of the Chilean President Salvador Allende –who died during the military coup d’état, on September 11, 1973– and identifies him with the figure of Christ (Salvador also means “savior’ in Spanish). At that time, this brand new metro station, in one of the renovated “uptown” sectors of the capital city of Santiago –along with the advertisements that can be seen around it such as the Fiat and Honda automobile signs next to Adasme’s feet– can also be understood as symbols of the recent modernization of the capital and expansion of foreign markets into the country (a clear example of the neoliberal economic regime imposed by the dictatorship). In both modules, Adasme creates a parallel between the living body of the artist and the contours of the nation. His swaying body recalls the curves of the borders of the Chilean territory. However, by inverting the position of his body, he is also disrupting this analogy, invoking the image of a world turned upside down. In Corporal intervention of an intimate geography (third module), he stands naked in a dark room with his back to the viewer and a map of Chile projected over his body, representing the torture and disappearances that occurred in that period. A fourth photograph Corporal intervention for hope shows Adasme facing the viewer with the word Chile written on his chest. The map next to him shows the same word crossed out. This image signifies the future redemption of the nation from the pain. Reproductions of the photographs were arranged in a four parts grid, printed in black and white, and pasted as posters on the streets and public buildings of Santiago. The permanence of the posters on the streets was documented and recorded, sometimes lasting only a few minutes, depending on the socioeconomic profile of the area where they were posted. So, it gathers a microsociology of the city through a visual event.
By inserting his action into the urban environment in this way, Adasme shared the concerns of other Chilean avant-garde artists of the moment, who insisted about the importance of working with the social reality in which they lived, in the midst of the military dictatorship.
“A Chile” Acciones de arte 1979 – 1980
Elías Adasme
Ficha técnica
Políptico registro fotográfico de acciones de arte:
5 paneles de 175 cms. de alto x 113 cms. de ancho, cada uno.
Ficha conceptual
Utilizando el cuerpo del artista y el mapa de Chile como referente simbólico del cuerpo geográfico, socio-político y cultural, estas acciones de arte llevadas a cabo entre diciembre de 1979 y diciembre de 1980, en la ciudad de Santiago, buscaban documentar desde el arte, la grave situación de represión y violación de derechos humanos a que estaba sometido el país bajo el régimen autoritario de Pinochet.
Dadas las circunstancias, algunas de ellas se tradujeron en intensos momentos de riesgo, con el tiempo necesario sólo para tomar el registro fotográfico y luego desaparecer de la escena, para evitar ser arrestado. Es el caso del segundo y quinto panel.
Comentarios sobre “A Chile”
“Tomemos ahora un caso de las emblemáticas acciones que se presentan hoy en el MAC. Elías Adasme durante 1979 y 1980 desarrolló la obra “A Chile”. Una serie de intervenciones urbanas y en las cuales una de las más arrojadas consistió en colgarse del aviso de acceso al metro Salvador con su torso desnudo al lado de un mapa de Chile. El acto de Adasme representa no sólo el gesto disruptivo que denota los mecanismos de tortura, sino que también reflejó un estado de conciencia de los mecanismos de producción de arte operando simultáneamente con la contingencia callejera, apropiando y subvirtiendo la calle y sus códigos.”
Sebastián Vidal Valenzuela.
Desnudar la opresión
En un conjunto de prácticas artísticas y políticas el cuerpo desnudo aparece como un dispositivo de acción que dibuja nuevos mapas de resistencia para romper con la represión tentacular de las dictaduras del Cono Sur. Frente a las normas públicas de disciplinamiento cada vez más asfixiantes, las acciones e imágenes dan cuenta de una nueva sensibilidad. El carácter performativo y clandestino –a la vez que sorprendentemente público– de estas irrupciones epidérmicas manifiesta la fragilidad del cuerpo sojuzgado, al tiempo que se rebela contra la reducción a la mera existencia (a lo que Walter Benjamin denominara la “vida desnuda”, concepto que retoma Giorgio Agamben como nuda vida”) de las vidas resistentes y deseantes, una operación mediante la cual esos regímenes allanaron el camino a la gobernabilidad neo-liberal en las sociedades de control contemporáneas. Así, estas microintervenciones o escenificaciones individuales o colectivas no se piensan a si mismo como referencias de sentido autistas o ensimismadas, sino que apuestan por impulsar la emergencia de formas de negación de la “normalidad” disciplinada y gris de la vida bajo la dictadura que denuncien, en el territorio de la propia piel, la oclusión y la insistencia, de la lucha y el erotismo.
Elías Adasme: una cartografía del dolor
Un primer panel con un cuerpo colgado boca abajo y con el torso descubierto, en el interior de un departamento, extendido junto a un mapa de Chile. Un segundo panel con el registro fotográfico del mismo cuerpo junto al mismo mapa colgado nuevamente: esta vez se trata de un espacio exterior, la estación de subte “Salvador”, próxima a uno de los centros neurálgicos de Santiago: Plaza Italia. Tercer panel: el mismo cuerpo, esta vez de espalda y completamente desnudo, en un interior oscuro, con el mapa de Chile incorporado sobre la piel. Finalmente, un cuarto panel: el artista Elías Adasme, de pie, junto al mismo mapa. En este último caso, el nombre del país austral, tan delgado y largo como el cuerpo del artista, ha sido tachado en la representación cartográfica para ser transferido al pecho de Adasme como una marca legible y encarnada de la disidencia estigmatizada, así como del deseo que aspira a rescatar para ese nombre propio el sentido de la utopía. Las estrategias de apropiación y desviación sígnica de lo que se ha dado en denominar Escena de Avanzada [1] son inscritas en esta obra de Adasme en la presencia bruta y sobreexpuesta del cuerpo del artista, cuya disposición invertida subraya la gravedad (en un sentido tanto literal como figurado) de la opresión y la tortura padecida por aquellos que hicieron suyas en el pasado las esperanzas de cambio social depositadas en el gobierno democrático de Salvador Allende (1970-1973), a quien alude indirectamente el nombre de la estación de metro elegida por el artista para emplazar su acción. Al situar en este enclave la asociación metafórica entre el carácter longitudinal del mapa chileno y el cuerpo violentado (que podría leerse también como una analogía entre la obsesión de la dictadura por el control de la integridad territorial de Chile y el disciplinamiento del cuerpo social, presentado acá de forma metonímica), Adasme esboza una cartografía del dolor que pone en juego una doble operación simbólica. Por un lado, al evocar la figura histórica de Salvador Allende identificándolo con la figura sacrificial de Cristo (que es a quien, en realidad, remite el “Salvador” de la estación de metro), el artista apunta hacia la muerte del presidente chileno durante el bombardeo del Palacio de La Moneda como imagen sintomática de la trágica clausura de las esperanzas revolucionarias, cuyo final habría traído aparejado, además, la opresión sufrida por los cuerpos y las conciencias bajo el régimen militar tanto en la esfera pública como privada (por ese motivo tal vez la crucifixión invertida escenificada por Adasme se reproduzca tanto en el espacio urbano como en un interior doméstico). Por otro lado, esta visión funesta de la historia se solapa con el carácter redentor y mesiánico del Cristo “Salvador” Allende, que de alguna manera vendría a nutrir con su sola mención y desde ese pasado cancelado, el anhelo de resurrección de las utopías doblegadas. Quizá sea esta última aspiración la que explique que, con posterioridad al registro de sus fotoperformances, Adasme decidiera elaborar un afiche con las cuatro imágenes mencionadas y pegarlo en distintas localizaciones de Santiago, desde zonas populares hasta campus universitarios. Mediante la medición del tiempo que los afiches permanecían pegados antes de ser retirados en cada uno de esos lugares de la ciudad, el artista realizaba un precario escrutinio de la aceptación de la exposición pública del cuerpo sojuzgado. Se trataba de configurar una suerte de microsociología urbana mediante un acontecimiento visual que, en el mismo gesto de hacer evidente la desnudez de la opresión negada por el régimen, evaluaba las reacciones de los diversos sujetos que poblaban el espacio urbano. En un momento en que la protesta movimientista aún no había tomado las calles, como sucedería a lo largo de la década de los ochenta, los signos de la violencia practicada por la dictadura en espacios invisibles situados en ese mismo territorio de la ciudad (un aspecto que permitía al poder tanto negar la represión como irrigar el miedo en la sociedad) se hacían evidentes ante los ojos de los transeúntes interpelados por estas imágenes del pathos.
Fernanda Carvajal
Texto de la publicación-catálogo de la exposición Perder la forma humana. Una imagen sísmica de los años ochenta en América Latina. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, España (2012).
Como primer síntoma, la obra artística tiende hacia un desplazamiento radical de su espacio social (el Museo de Bellas Artes, la pinacoteca burguesa), pues desconfía ya de su impronta “aurática” y cultual reduccionada – secuestrada, si se quiere – que la cultura lleva a cabo. Este desplazamiento de la expresión plástica de la Institución la lleva al lugar de referencias más heterogéneo posible: al espacio público de la calle. La instalación personal realizada por Elías Adasme en el año 1979 constituye un modelo al respecto, utilizando su propio cuerpo como soporte plástico en diálogo con un mapa de Chile en una de las estaciones del subterráneo metropolitano de Santiago – en otrora símbolo de jactancia modernizadora e higiene ambiental. Dicha “acción-de-arte” suscita desde ya cierta cobertura periodística en el medio local de la época (revista La Bicicleta, Mercurio de Santiago), como también en el grueso trabajo de investigación de los estetas Ívelic y Galaz (Chile, Arte actual). Cabe interrogar esta obra en tanto performática artística que problematiza tanto los elementos aquí asignados, como también la advertencia de cierto divorcio que sólo el acontecimiento abre entre el “tiempo real” de la obra y su receptividad posterior [2]. Tiempo diferido del evento, pero que despliega en su interior una relación íntima entre el cuerpo individual y el cuerpo colectivo que, doblemente diferido, busca como lenguaje performativo dar cuenta del padecimiento, del trauma no a la manera descriptiva, sino testimonial [3]. Podríamos sostener, entonces, que el problema mismo de la obra aconteciente, que da cuenta de este contexto socio histórico determinado, en franca disidencia con los moldes de pensamiento axiológicos y políticos aquí descritos, radica en que no puede sostener una pretensión crítica mientras se estacione en los meros efectos dejados por el neoliberalismo (recesión económica, sociedad de consumo). En otras palabras, puesto que la reconstrucción económica contamina todas las instancias culturales y le imprime a éstas una sistémica de valor “sígnica” – tanto más hegemónica que su mero valor de cambio [4] –, el arte, o bien suplementa al signo convencional para que enuncie aquello que de manifiesto no hace, o bien lo desplaza en un soporte móvil para reinsertarlo (como fotografía o vídeo) en el interior de los espacios convencionales, subvirtiéndolos desde dentro.
Texto extraído de Una exposición plástica como índice del acontecimiento. (1979-1981 en Chile). José Miguel Arancibia Romero, Magíster en Filosofía con mención en Axiología y Filosofía Política. Santiago de Chile, año 2012.
In December 1979, Elías Adasme, who had been working in graphic art and participating since 1978 in several graphic exhibitions, [5] took the nation’s official map (with all the newly acquired and disputed territories, including the Antarctic) and subjected it to a series of corporeal relations and physical emplacements. On December 16, Adasme went to the new subway station of El Salvador in Providencia and hung a long map of Chile on one of the station’s pole signs with leather straps [6]. Wearing only his pants, Adasme then hung himself, head down, from the other pole, where he was photographed (fig. 5.3) [7]. The same action was repeated in other locations, such as the artist’s studio and his bedroom, where he hung head down from the door’s threshold next to a Chilean map, or appeared standing against a black wall, nude, with his back to the viewer and a map of Chile projected onto his body. A fourth photograph was taken of Adasme facing the viewer with the word “Chile” inscribed on his chest while the map next to him presented the same word crossed out. Reproductions of the photographs were arranged in a four part grid, printed in black and white, and pasted as posters on the streets of Santiago and other public buildings (such as libraries and universities) between late December and the beginning of 1980. The time of permanence of the posters on the streets was counted and recorded, sometimes lasting only a few minutes. The work, titled “A Chile” (To Chile), gave both body to the territory and “territorialized” the body of the artist [8]. As he hung from thresholds and poles, or stood with the map graphically inscribed on his skin, Adasme’s body seemed to duplicate in size and length that of the map, his swaying and curving corporeality recalling the undulating curves of the Chilean territory’s borders. In the photograph of the completely nude artist, standing rigidly with his arms close to the sides of his body, the map’s rectangular frame matched at parts his own contours, the Chilean territory becoming almost a curvilinear duplicate of the artist’s spine starting at his nape and ending below his buttocks, with the southern division of the territory into continental parts and long column of islands resembling the verticality of his legs. The inscription in capitalized letters of the words “MAP OF CHILE” in both the maps and one of Adasme’s standing photographs, reasserted visually the parallel between two masses or forms of corporeality and their identification through verbal language. The geopolitical map presented by Adasme was of the type used at schools or hung in public offices as a didactic backdrop and a nationalist reminder [9]. In such contemporary geopolitical maps a particular location associated with a nation-state is presented and symbolized, requiring both words and images (particularly lines) to represent it as a whole. Through its contours and signaled locations (such as: this is a “map of Chile” and not of China), the map can be seen as an attempt to create a unified and integral vision of a territory, translating into a flat area what is an otherwise curved, three dimensional, and disparate surface. This vision is presented from a god-like height and the contours of the nation objectified through measurements that are scaled down to fit a human environment. The official map of Chile used by Adasme established a clear North-South orientation following the Mercator arrangement, including the thirteen recently renamed regions composing Chile, starting with number one in the north and ending in the Antarctic continent with number thirteen. The capital instead, occupied its own distinct space as an independent region: “metropolitan,” [10] asserting its independent and central role in the nation. This type of nation-state map tacitly makes a connection between the people living within the boundaries of the territory and the place itself as a binding form of identity. Maps assert visually the existence of a ‘homeland,’ which all those living within its borders share. Such a tracing of identity homogenizes the differences both within (ethnicities, races, genders) and without (different nationalities), creating an apparently cohesive whole. The Chilean dictatorship made such a nationalistic claim of belonging to a place when it asserted that in Chile there were no Indians but only Chileans, [11] swiping out ethnic differences from the nation’s surface. To be Chilean and to belong to the territory demarcated as the homeland was to be the same. If Adasme created in his work a parallel between the living body of the artist and the contours of the nation, establishing both as frames of identity, he was also disrupting this analogy. By inverting the position of his body, distorting its ‘normal’ upright position as he hanged upside down next to the maps, Adasme was inverting its order and orientation, ‘lowering’ the hierarchical place assigned to the head. This inversion signaled a discrepancy between the ‘upright’ map and the individual body within its suggested borders, invoking a medieval image of the fool and a world turned upside down. The real, fleshy body of the artist ‘contained’ within the schematic contours of the territory as traced in the map, not only created a contradiction between the geopolitical frame as an objective, scientific mode of defining identity and the bodies making up the concept of the ‘nation,’ but at the same time it suggested that the space within was one of carnivalesque disorder and difference. While pointing to the convention of assigning to the “north” the uppermost position in the map, Adasme was signaling the socially constructed nature of such forms of national representation as well as their ‘imagined’ character [12]. In this sense, the map was envisioned by Adasme as a ‘space of representation” or ‘conceived space,” a term used by Henri Lefebvre to distinguish between images and constructs of a space from its physical or material characteristics (“perceived space”), and how it is actually lived, experienced, and transformed by human beings (“lived space”) [13]. While my own characterization of Lefebvre’s trialectic of space is simplified, it aims to point to the gap formed between maps presented as objective rationalizations of space and the actual practices and lived experience of them. Adasme’s body was not merely ‘territorialized’ in the sense of given a specific Chilean character through the use of a particular map, but the act of defining identity through the connection created between place and abstract graphic circumscription of space was questioned. Adasme’s varied positioning of his own body within and without the map, as well as the map’s inscription and physical relation to his body with all its symbolic and imagined connotations, invited to a more complex reading of nationality, identity, and placement that pointed to the discrepancies and disjunctions among them. Adasme’s choice of the subway entrance and sign in one of the renovated ‘uptown’ sectors of the capital for the only outdoors photograph of the series is significant for several reasons. Not only did the capital act as the ground in which the action was effectively situated, the ‘center’ of Chile acting as a frame for the work and specifying its actual physical location (using Lefebvre’s terminology, acting as ‘perceived’ space), just like the map invoked the overarching representation of the nation (or ‘conceived’ space). It also pointed to a specific change in the Chilean landscape associated with the growing and modernizing capital enacted by the dictatorship (the ‘lived’ space of Lefebvre). The economic bonanza experienced by the nation as a partial result of the liberal policies installed by the government, were symbolized by the expanding subway and its updated form of transportation and, as seen in the photograph, the varied forms of public advertisement in the forms of large scale billboards mounted on apartments’ roofs. The “HONDA automobiles” sign next to Adasme’s feet was literally a sign of the Chilean economic expansion to foreign markets, one of the few forms of exterior contact allowed by the dictatorship. The irony found in the juxtaposition of the subway sign to the automobile company’s resided not only in the contradictory forms of transportation each promoted (public versus private), but in the discursive nature shared by the signs, their similarity as forms of propaganda and advertisement. These even included the map, which appeared in the photograph almost up for sale like the rest of the urban landscape [14]. The specific location chosen by Adasme was also important in terms of the symbolism found in the name of the station. “Salvador” (Savior) referred not merely to the hospital located in the station’s neighborhood but also to Christ, [15] finding its echo in the tortured-looking body of the hanging Adasme, a modern bearded Saint Peter of sorts [16]. To the signs of growing capitalism and to the graphic symbol of the nation, Adasme opposed the body in pain, a body unable to move, disoriented in spite of the map [17]. Against a changing cityscape, Adasme posited the body as a site of memory, enacting the location and its given historic meanings through a painful performance of the site’s name, ‘savior.’ The allusion to other bodies contained within the territory of Chile, from those ill to those executed, tortured, and displaced, signaled the multiple corporealities making up the notion of the nation-state, and how the idea of its homogeneity was given physical reality through the political and physical imposition of boundaries. The apostolic reference involved in Adasme’s inverted and martyred body was further connected to the new proselytizing mission of the Chilean vanguards and the expansion of artistic actions to the lived environment. Both in the performance of the action and in its last portion consisting of pasting the action’s reproductions onto walls, Adasme was inserting his work into the visual economy of the city scape, mixing his own posters with the signs of commercial products. Incorporating the city as a site for his work and as a body to be intervened, Adasme was materializing the seminar’s emphasis on the artist working ‘with’ and ‘on’ the social reality he or she was living in. Adasme was adamant in a questionnaire on art criticism published in Revista CAL on the active role of the artist of the present, who had to “assume his practice, in terms of historic accusation and in terms of the art system,” since they were living in an “emergency situation [18]” But for Adasme, the socio-historical situation of the nation had not merely to be assumed: the limits of artistic action had to be “extended” as well [19]. That this extension took the form of operating in the city by mixing the private and the public realms by means of the actions and photographs, through placement, and the artist’s own nudity, suggested a new possible path to betaken by artist where the conceived, perceived, and lived spaces were conjoined in an intimate relationship. This extension towards an active artistic stance reached its peak in October 1980, when Adasme walked around the crowded Paseo Ahumada handing out printed copies of one of the performance’s photographs (the artist’s back with the map projected on his skin), while wearing a t-shirt stating the slogan; “el arte debe ser ineludible” (Art must be unavoidable). Stopped by policemen, the artist was quickly arrested and released. The pamphlet also contained a text that stated: “from the dismembered and hierarchical geography of South America, we say art should be unavoidable,” adding that in a time of negation where the inhabited space was turned into one of “non-belonging,” art should be “a dynamic and effective action capable of affecting reality [20].” Regarded by the artist as “an act of reevaluating the landscape,[21]” the artistic action was perceived as a way to “intervene common spaces, the inverted scene, and the confrontation of collective signs: the assault of reality through art.[22]” The phrase “inversión de escena” (inverted scene) was a reference to a 1979 work of the C.A.D.A. group discussed below, which signals the change in artistic practices that occurred between the last months of 1979 and the beginning of the 1980s as a group of artists were reclaiming their rights to the city using guerrilla-like techniques. Such an inscriptive gesture of actions performed in the social fabric found its explanation in Adasme’s formulation of graphic art in 1980. Adasme stated then that “graphing” should not merely be understood under traditional modes of printmaking, but as a “making visible ideas through a “tracing” that operates as the instrumentalization of these means [of current mass communication], which determine its status as art before the epoch in which it is inscribed.”[23] Graphic practices were being redefined as larger forms of social inscriptions with a conceptual base, tracings making visible ideas through mediums such as photography or written texts. The graphic mark was a trace attuned to its own time and modes of representation, a trace that made visible the present, spoke its language, and yet ‘assaulted’ its structures through a physical intervention. Marking the landscape in an extended sense, from the lived surroundings to their visual representation as modes of constructing identity, became from 1979 onwards a guiding principle in the works of the Chilean conceptual artists.
Marking the Territory: Performance, video, and conceptual graphics in Chilean art, 1975-1985 A Dissertation Presented by Carla Macchiavello to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Criticism. Stony Brook University May 2010. Pages 274 – 279.
NOTE
[1] El término Escena de Avanzada fue acuñado por la crítica cultural Nelly Richard durante los años ochenta para caracterizar una serie de prácticas que, desde la segunda mitad de la década anterior, apuntaron a una reformulación de las relaciones entre el arte y la política en la que ese nexo se sustrajera a “toda dependencia ilustrativa al repertorio ideológico de la izquierda sin dejar, al mismo tiempo, de oponerse tajantemente al idealismo de lo estético como esfera desvinculado de lo social”. Ver Nelly Richard, Márgenes e instituciones. Arte en Chile desde 1973, Santiago de Chile: Metales Pesados, 2007 (1a ed. 1987), pp.15-16. Richard citaba como integrantes de esa escena a artistas como Carlos Leppe, Eugenio Dittborn, Catalina Parra, Carlos Altamirano, el grupo CADA, Juan Castillo, Juan Dávila, Víctor Hugo Codocedo o el propio Adasme.
[2] Como describe el artículo de la revista La Bicicleta: (nov.-dic. 1980), no hay acá acontecimiento específico que narrar, pues la selección de los tres elementos en acción (cuerpo, mensaje vial, mapa) “quedan determinados por los propios contenidos del espectador que se enfrenta a la obra” (Op. Cit. P. 6). En el contexto de este estudio: la obra plástica de Adasme cabe observarla como signum que hace presente pero no ya en su espacio temporal de acción, sino en la documentación fotográfica recuperativa del evento –por lo demás, la obra-acción en propiedad, no puede sustraerse a esta condición “diferida” del tiempo, como consecuencia que el acontecimiento se exige serializado a partir de lo acontecido de su acción; la fotografía adquiere esta cualidad fantasmática de retrotraer el acontecimiento a nosotros, tal como lo sentía Benjamin en sus reflexiones sobre la obra exhibitiva; como próximas a una desaparición total. Fotografía de Adasme –el arte ad portas de estar detenido (como evento) –desaparecido (como evento).
[3] “El recuerdo abismado del pasado traumático sólo provoca una memoria lagunar, siempre inadecuada, que nunca le va a ser justicia a lo padecido porque no hay equivalencia posible entre la angustia de la destrucción y las imágenes del después de (…) Sin embargo, estas imágenes de vuelta no pueden renunciar a mostrar algo de lo indescriptible, para solicitarle así al pensamiento crítico analizar del cómo representar el fracaso de la representación.” Richard, Nelly: Crítica de la memoria. Op. Cit. P. 23.
[4] “Las clases dominantes, siempre, o bien han asegurado de golpe su dominio sobre los valores / signos o bien han intentado sobrepasar, trascender, consagrar su privilegio económico en privilegio de los signos; porque este estado ulterior representa el estado cabal de la dominación.” (Baudrillard, J: Crítica de la economía política del signo. Op. Cit. Pp. 126-127).
[5] Adasme had studied art at the University of Chile. After his graduation, he participated in a two-person show at CAL in June-July1978 and continued participating in several contests throughout the early 1980s.
[6] Line 2 of the subway, crossing the first line, began functioning in March 1977. Work for an extension of Line 1 to reach into the ‘upper’ zones of the capital, began in October 1978, connecting downtown Santiago with the Military School.
[7] Panels 2 and 3 of the work “A Chile” are published in Gerardo Mosquera, ed., Copiar el Edén Arte Reciente en Chile/Copying Eden. Recent Art in Chile (Santiago: Ediciones y Publicaciones Puro Chile, 2006), in pages 174 and 175. Panel 1 is published in Chile Arte Actual, in page 193. There is also documentation in Copiar el Edén of Adasme’s following “diffusion” or intervention in the streets, with photographs of the artist pasting the images, in page 172.
[8] Josefina de la Maza, in the section on Elías Adasme in Copiar el Edén, 172. Copiar el Edén attempts to bridge the gap between the history of the Chilean avant-gardes and contemporary art in Chile, yet does so by providing a brief glimpse into over a hundred different artists, presenting their most well-known works without much contextualization, except for the introductory text by Mosquera. Each artist is presented with a brief commentary on the work illustrated, as in the case of Adasme.
[9] High school’s educational programs were revised in 1977 by the Ministry of Education, particularly the course on History and Geography of Chile. From April onwards it was established that this course would focus on a periodical recounting of the fatherland’s history since the sixteenth century, effectively eliminating from national histories those of the natives unless seen under the lens of colonialism. See, “Revisión a programas de educación media,” El Mercurio, April 24, 1977.
[10] The regions’ names were published in El Mercurio on October 11, 1978. The new designations were part of an effort from the dictatorship to establish clear regional boundaries.
[11] The statement was issued by the Minister of Agriculture, Alfonso Marquéz de la Plata: “In Chile there are no indigenous people; everybody is Chilean.” The statement was part of a dispute started in 1977, exploding in 1978 and extending for several years, regarding the expropriation of Mapuche lands and their reorganization by the government. The Mapuches were given “titles of dominion” which effectively reduced the actual lands they owned, and had lived and worked in, for centuries. The Minister explained the actions by stating that the dominion titles were meant to “integrate them in a definite manner to Chileanness with the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of the population.” See “Mapuches, ¿la hora de extinguirse?” Revista Hoy, September 13-19, 1978, 29.
[12] Doreen B. Massey has explicitly made the assertion that maps are not only social products, but that they reflect the power of their makers. For a good collection of essays on geography and power relations, see Doreen B. Massey, John Allen, Philip Sarre, eds., Human Geography Today (UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999). See also the introduction by Denis Cosgrove, in Denis Cosgrove, ed., Mappings (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 1-23.
[13] Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991).
[14] The subway’s expansion had not only changed the surface and underground aspect of the city, through its construction process and the replacement of buses for another form of transportation, altering habits of mobilization through the city’s center, but it had also engaged in a cultural campaign aimed at beautifying and improving the cultural knowledge of the nation. In an attempt to bring art to the public, the subway had started in March 1977 a series of exhibitions of European “masterpieces” in the form of poster reproductions. See the article “El metro difunde la pintura,” El Mercurio, March 22, 1977.
[15] The hospital was created in 1872 under the name “del Salvador’ (of the Savior), with lands bought from the Catholic Church.
[16] In 1991, Adasme made a performance titled “Estudio histórico para una cruz y ficción” (Historical study for a cross and fiction) in the Liga de Arte de San Juan, Puerto Rico, involving his mock crucifixion. I will analyze the cross imagery further in the next chapter in the context of Rosenfeld and Mezza’s videos.
[17] The work generated controversy when it was exhibited in 1980 at the Gráfica Centenario (Centennial Graphics) in the Museum of Fine Arts. For a description see “Gráfica polémica,” La Bicicleta, no. 8 (November-December 1980): 6.
[18] Elías Adasme, in “La crítica de arte en Chile,” Revista CAL, no. 3 (August 1979): 7-8.
[19] In the interview, Adasme also spoke of “breaking, in this way, the tradition of centuries, in which the art situation got resolved within art.” Adasme, “La crítica de arte en Chile,” 8.
[20] The full text can be read in Adasme’s webpage. See Elías Adasme, “El arte debe ser ineludible,” Elías Adasme, October 1980. A part of the text was reproduced by the critic Víctor Carvacho when he reviewed the Segundo Encuentro de Artistas Jóvenes at the Instituto Cultural de Las Condes in November 1980, where Adasme presented the text along with photographs. See Víctor Carvacho, “Segundo encuentro de jóvenes artistas,” La Nación, November 19, 1980.
[21] Adasme, “El arte debe ser ineludible.”
[22] Ibid.
[23] Elías Adasme, interviewed in “¿Qué pasa con el grabado en Chile?,” La Tercera, May 25, 1980. The article’s title (What is happening with printing in Chile) is telling of the perception coming from Chilean art critics that something was changing in the approach to printing practices.
Elías Adasme (Illapel, Chile, 1955) Artista visual, diseñador gráfico, profesor de arte y ensayista de arte contemporáneo. Explora una diversidad de trabajos conceptuales, recurriendo para su materialización a instalaciones, performances, gráfica digital, poesía visual y arte correo. Parte de su obra está en las colecciones permanentes del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Universidad de Chile, del Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico y del Museo Nacional Reina Sofía de Madrid, España.