Social fabric, textile art and political commitment / Rometti Costales: Song for a chanting fossil / Hugo Rivera-Scott: Anchor 637 with Hugo Rivera Scott and others

With the motto Art + Transformation, the Salvador Allende Museum of Solidarity (MSSA) proposes for 2019 a program of exhibitions and activities that pay homage to the artists and collectives that have contributed to cultural change in different times, spaces, and fields. It also represents the desire to provide continuity to the process of opening the doors to and collaborating with local, national, and international communities that has driven the museum since its foundation, with the intention of being a living and open institution.

Working at the convergence of both concepts involves revisiting the historical forces that engendered the museum in 1971, which was founded following an unprecedented model of donations from international artists committed to the proposal of a “museum for the Chilean people” that was launched by then president Salvador Allende.

Today, the MSSA relocates the progressive, critical and solidarity forces, by promoting experimental creation in the immediate surroundings of the Republic neighborhood, doing research and disseminating what is considered one of the most relevant collections of modern and contemporary art in Latin America, consisting of more than 2800 artworks. Along this line, three new shows will be opened on March 30, with a celebration party in front of the MSSA for the community.

The exhibition Social Fabric. Textile art and political commitment is a journey through national and international works that were created or donated to the Museum in support of socio-political causes in Chile during the second half of the 20th century. Curated by Josefina de la Maza (Santiago, Chile, 1980), 70 works weave stories of solidarity and political commitment: from the arrival of the French artist Jean Lurçat‘s gobelin in 1972; the political banner made by John Dugger in 1976; the large-format textiles by artists Roser Bru and Gracia Barrios that were recovered after they disappeared in the aftermath of the coup d’Etat in 1973; the arpilleras (patchworks) created during the dictatorship, which denounced human rights violations, and the works by artists devoted to contemporary textile production such as Josep Grau-Garriga, Olga de Amaral, and Marta Palau.

Meanwhile, Anchor 637 with Hugo Rivera-Scott and others is an anthological show, proposing a selection of works that represent the broad trajectory of visual artist Hugo Rivera-Scott (Viña del Mar, Chile, 1943). Rivera-Scott is part of the founding group of the Instituto Superior de Diseño, La Habana, Cuba, and a professor at Universidad de Chile. The exhibition, curated by Daniela Berger and the artist, shows his unknown artistic production between 1973 and 1975, as well as three site specific works from his renowned Diagrams series, gathering a prolific set of works where poetry and visuality are at the base of experimentation. Additionally, the show includes works by artists who worked alongside Rivera-Scott in collective productions in the Valparaíso region, such as Lilo Salberg (Essen, Germany, 1908–Chile, 1988), who was a close friend and teacher of Rivera-Scott. This is the first exhibition that puts together a selection of more than 20 works by Salberg and unprecedented works of Rivera-Scott.

The contemporary art rooms will host Song for a chanting fossil by the artistic duo Rometti Costales—formed by Julia Rometti (Nice, France, 1975) and Víctor Costales (Minsk, Belarus, 1974)—who draw on the history of the Heiremans palace, the building where the Museum is located, in order to establish a relation with the vestiges of life and fossilization processes of the Atacama desert, a territory where different stages of the economic and political history of Chile have taken place. This exhibition is curated by Magalí Arriola and it is a co-production of MSSA and KADIST. Magalí Arriola is currently KADIST Lead Curator for Latin America, in charge of the project The missing circle, of which the Rometti Costales exhibition in the MSSA is an integral part.