August 21 - 31: 3rd Antofagasta’s Contemporary Art Week

This year, Antofagasta’s Contemporary Art Week, SACO3, goes international and targets a key matter: the problematic relation among Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Within the framework of the call issued by SE VENDE Collective Contemporary Art Mobile Platform, curators, researchers and visual artists from the three countries are going to participate in conferences, workshops and publications; complemented by the exhibit entitled “My Neighbor. The Other (Mi Vecino. El otro)”, August 21 - 31 at Huanchaca Cultural Park.

The list of curators is made up of boldface names: Gustavo Buntinx (Peru), Lucía Querejazu (Bolivia) and Rodolfo Andaur (Chile). The experts have respectively invited researchers Harold Hernández, Juan Fabbri and Damir Galaz-Mandakovi, as well as artists César Cornejo and Elliot Túpac Urcuhuaranga, Andrés Bedoya and Jaime Achocalla, Claudio Correa and Catalina González, who stand out in the field of contemporary art.

While the theoreticians present their researches by means of texts and conferences, the artists will be displaying their artworks all over the place, where a silver foundry was managed by Bolivians, Chileans and Brits between 1892 and 1902 and presently stands as a National Historic Monument. The interventions will be symbols that give a different approach to the official or generalized discourses, aiming at the fictional character of certain cultural constructions or identity hegemonies, thus questioning the definitions on “the other”.

“In SACO3 we take the historic weight of the place where we stand: Antofagasta. With the title Mi Vecino. El otro, we want to establish an unprejudiced dialogue on the trilateral imaginary, historic and contemporarily, giving priority to the individuals instead of States. We strongly believe that art has the power to go deep into fractured terrains that just a few people dare to step on”, Dagmara Wyskiel, director of SACO, asserts.

For Patricio Vilaplana, Manager of Corporate Affairs with Minera Escondida, SACO3 offers an opportunity to combine approaches and criteria that go beyond the representations and basic icons of national identity. “This is an invitation to look at ourselves and our neighbors – both Peruvian and Bolivian– with our present condition. It’s not a platform to foster hatefulness, but to recognize each other”.

The Contemporary Art Week or SACO is organized in the north of Chile as an autonomous and cyclic initiative promoted by Colectivo Collective Contemporary Art Mobile Platform, in an effort to get the local public closer to current productions, and construct a heterogeneous and moldable platform to establish connections and dialogue. The event is supported by Minera Escondida, funded by the Regional Government of Antofagasta, sponsored by the Regional Council of Culture and Arts and CNC Medios, hosted by Huanchaca Cultural Park.