Chile or Utopian Imagination: On Democracy as Aesthetics

Cecilia Barriga is a Chilean director, screenwriter and audiovisual producer who has lived in Madrid since 1977. She has documented the situation women face around the world and has explored feminist thought and activism and the construction of identities, both individual and collective. Furthermore, she has closely followed citizen movements such as 15M in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in the USA and the student protests in Chile. Her work has been exhibited internationally in contemporary art museums, on television and at film festivals such as the Indie Film Festivals in New York and Honk Kong, the Mostra de Cinema de Dones de Barcelona, the Festival Viña del Mar in Chile, and festivals in Havana (Cuba), Amiens and Creteil (France).

Elicura Chihuailaf is a writer and poet of Mapuche origin who was awarded Chile’s National Prize for Literature in 2020. His work is chiefly bilingual, in Mapudungun and Spanish, and the foundational nature of his practice fosters the flourishing of Mapuche poetry in a modern, written and bilingual style.

Delight Lab is a studio for art, audiovisual design and experimentation around light, video, space and sound, and is conducted by visual and sound artist Andrea Gana and artist and designer Octavio Gana. Together they carry out interventions related to social and environmental issues, and develop projects with Mapuche communities for the preservation of their sacred territories and spiritual culture.

Elvira Hernández is among the most unique voices in contemporary Chilean and Latin American poetry. Her books, published in Chile, Argentina and Colombia, most notably include ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre! (1986), Meditaciones físicas por un hombre que se fue (1987), Carta de viaje (1989), La bandera de Chile (1991), El orden de los días (1991), Santiago Waria (1992) y Álbum de Valparaíso (2003). In 2018 she was awarded the Jorge Teillier National Poetry Prize and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award, among other honours.

Mauricio Redolés is a Chilean poet, musician and performer. In 1975, he became a political exile and moved to England, where he lived for ten years. In London he studied at City University, obtaining an A Level in Sociology, and published his first poetry works and released his first tape, Canciones & poemas.

Alejandra del Río Lohan is a poet whose practice spans poetry on paper and performance, work with children, artistic interventions, video-poems and recordings. She is one of the most representative voices from the 1990s generation in Chile.

Álvaro Silva Wuth is a visual artist who makes small-scale wire sculptures. In 2013, he made the piece Últimas palabras (Final Words), the whole transcript of Salvador Allende’s final speech in one sole 70-metre copper wire thread that was unfolded in front of the Ateneo de Madrid in a ceremony of commemoration to mark 40 years since the coup d’état in Chile. In 2017, he donated the work to the Salvador Allende Foundation and was invited to display it in Santiago de Chile’s Plaza de la Constitución, on 11 September of the same year, opposite the Palacio de la Moneda.