Reports - Venecia - Italy

Diego Parra Donoso

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14.07.2022

Around the World, Again

Chilean Pavilion in the 59th Venice Biennale

It was in August last year that Chile’s Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage announced the pre-selection of seven curatorial projects that had applied to represent the country at the 59th Venice Biennale. I remember that the group seemed strange to me, they had nothing in common and since there were seven jurors, I thought that each had chosen the one they liked the most and thought nothing more of it. In general, one looks for patterns in the criteria used for such cases, to then guess which path the final choice would take. In this case I could not, and when in October it was made public that the winning proposal was Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol by Camila Marambio, the truth is that I was utterly confused. From the beginning I found it difficult to elucidate the reasons that led the jury to privilege a project “without an artist”, or rather, where the curator was listed as an artist, after this topic had already been widely debated several years ago. So I decided to take advantage of every instance where Turba Tol was explained, so that my apprehensions to the curator-based model would be attenuated.

I must say that I am writing this provocation from my desk in a cold Santiago de Chile, far from the glamour of Venice. That is to say, I haven’t physically seen the pavilion currently presented at the Arsenale, but I think my somewhat hesitant approach—on this occasion—tends to ponder more the general issues of Marambio’s proposal, rather than the actual experience of stepping into the room. Besides, the curator herself has taken it upon herself to install a proposal that takes this issue into account, and has disseminated all the curatorial activities on the web.

Now, although at the beginning it was the idea of a curator as the axis that caught my attention; as I studied the pavilion better, my interest turned towards questions less linked to disciplinary debates, and more connected to the politics projected from the curatorial point of view. We could summarize the whole project as an interaction between art as a medium and environmental activism. And I say “as a medium” here, because Marambio herself states that she wants to be a representative of the cause of the peatlands; and at the same time, Barbara Saavedra, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society – Chile, partner organization of the project, refers to it as an instance of awareness-raising in the most important global showcase of the art world. I also perceived this “secondary” condition of the artistic in the curatorial emphasis on the fact that there is no “art work” in the terms we would traditionally expect, but rather an “immersive installation” (those that are so liked nowadays) that produces a multisensory experience where sight, smell and touch interact. The important thing, they say, is to raise awareness of the uniqueness of peatlands, these ancient ecosystems that collect carbon and are vital for thermal regulation, but paradoxically are endangered by human action (the sphagnum moss that grows there has agricultural uses).

Everything seems fine up to that point. We all agree with the environmental demands, especially those of us who live in the countries of the global south, who are dangerously hit by climate change and extractive industries that turn our waters, soils and air into “sacrifice zones”. The curious thing comes later, and it is perhaps the “artistic” spice that ends up seasoning this proposal with issues that I think it is important to mention. The curator decided to add a third element to this interaction of art and science: “indigenous knowledge”; without going any further, the title Hol-Hol Tol is an expression in Selk’nam that means “the heart of the peatlands.” In addition, knowing how important it is not to profiteer from native epistemologies, they decided to add Hema’ny Molina, a Selk’nam writer, to the team, who ensures that no one accuses Turba Tol of appropriating knowledge or discourses that are alien to them. The concern for the agency of the individuals with whom contemporary art works is something real, and I think it is important to take it into account; however, one cannot help but be suspicious of these procedures that, at the end of the day, elude the underlying issue: the indigenous presence comes to function as an extra attraction in the contemporary art market. For any artistic project this generates an ideal situation: a “just cause” and subalternity, nobody can say anything because it would imply not valuing the good intentions of the organizers.

But returning to the above, whenever someone assumes the voice of subaltern identities, they are condemning them to remain in the obscurity to which the West has relegated them (in the case of Selk’nam, it is even said that they are an extinct people). But, in addition, any proposal that considers itself a challenger of the colonial order should also ask itself about the coloniality of its own practices, and even more so, about the need to participate in the most colonial art event of all (the oldest and one that still reproduces the geopolitical order of the 19th century West). It seems to me that the cynical idea that everything is eventually phagocytized by the capitalist machine does not satisfy the answer to this issue, where unlike in other spheres, one can constantly err. In addition, there is a local history of colonialism that seems to be forgotten in the very territory that Turba Tol intervened: the south of Chile (specifically the Strait of Magellan) was the space where, for almost four centuries, the West surrounded the world to get its hands on global wealth. Yesterday it was goods and people (like Jemmy Button)[1] that were transferred to Europe for their entry into the perpetual circulation of capital; today, in a time of immaterial economy, it is ancestral knowledge and practices that give energy to a hegemonic artistic scenario that seems to require sophisticated and exoticizing forms of novelty.

Thirty years ago, at the Seville International Exposition, Chile decided to bring a large iceberg from Antarctica to its pavilion. The idea was to demonstrate that the country could transport its valuable goods anywhere in the world without them losing their qualities on the journey. Today we do not carry icebergs, but it seems that the extractive logic persists, only that the goods that the West demands for its survival are different, some dressed with good intentions and immunity to criticism.

Notes

  1. Editor’s note: Orundellico, a member of the Yámana native people baptized by his appropriator as Jemmy Button, was kidnapped at the age of 14 by the commander of the Beagle, Lieutenant Robert Fitz Roy (1805-1865) along with three other people whom he transported to Europe as a result of his desire to “civilize and evangelize” them. Part of a colonial social experiment, Orundellico “Jemmy Button” was taken back to his homeland where he died, judicially and politically persecuted, impoverished at the age of 48 on an islet in Wulaia Bay that today bears “his” name given by the colonist appropriator: Button Island.

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