The Shadows of History will Never Leave Us

SACO Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo, Biblioteca Regional de Antofagasta, Antofagasta, Chile, 28.06-14.09.2023

The work concerns the physical and mental state of a victim of violence. My deformed and colorless silhouette is reflected in the black mirror surface of the wall. I touch it with my finger, it has an irregular structure that bends reality. I walk along and come to the corner where my second reflection appears. I and not-me at the same time on the left and on the right side. We can call the corner a dead end of violence. We can enter between black walls in a group of other people, but the culmination is always an individual confrontation. How much violence does it take to turn a man into a shadow? In what units is it measured? – asked in the curatorial text.
The work is located in the library, one of the main inspirations was the book The Twilight Zone by Chilean writer Nona Fernandez. She calls the twilight zone what belonged to the world of violence under Pinochet’s brutal regime, hundreds of murders and tens of thousands of tortured prisoners.