Umbrales: ¿Cómo anudar el tiempo?

In constellation with 15 Bienal de Artes Mediales, Santiago de Chile, November 26, 2021–March 31, 2022

What should a social order look like that seeks answers to pressing issues we are facing today? Which codes form the social network of our time? How can art and culture contribute to the fragile ecosystem in which we live?

Within the scope of 15 Bienal de Artes Mediales in Santiago de Chile, the exhibition Umbrales/Thresholds explores the transformation, insecurity and vulnerability of our societies in times of multiple planetary crises. Being at the threshold means being in an intermediate state, in uncertainty, the unknown and unconscious, and also in a moment of change.

This joint project takes as its starting point the wave of protests in Chile that began in October 2019. The country’s deep and interlinked social and ecological crises are made evident. The protests resulted in the regeneration of the Chilean constitution, which still derived from the time of the Pinochet dictatorship, and is now being rewritten in a participative process that will be completed in 2023.

Questions concerning ecological sensitivity, the recognition of a diversity of cultures and languages, gender equality, and the socio-technological nature of our living environments will be crucial elements for the constitutional dialogue in Chile, and a possible guide for the rest of the planet. They all represent themes that require the reorganisation of social orders around the world. 

How to Tie Time Together? poses the question as to how we can enter into relationships with one another and find orientation and contact in space and time. The Chilean artists Elisa Balmaceda and Claudia González as well as the Brazilian artist Barbara Marcel look at various threshold moments: the protests on the streets in Chile, the landscapes and people exhausted by exploitation and industrialisation, the ruins of a modernised and accelerated world. A sense of interconnectedness is at the centre of these works, a feeling that makes the entanglements of life tangible. Beginning with these symbiotic nodes, these works explore a myriad of opportunities to create connections by means of and yet also in particular by going beyond human languages. Different forms of knowledge and old and new technologies intermingle and open up a new understanding of ourselves and the contexts within which we live.

The exhibition at ifa Gallery Stuttgart is interwoven with sites and programmes at the biennial in Santiago. These include bosquemuseo — an into-the-wild museological research project questioning paradigms such as permanence, conservation and enclosure, aiming to facilitate transformation and fusion with the natural cycles of the environment. Both parts of this project see themselves as invitations to sharpen our senses and sensitivity at a time of insecurity — to observe attentively, to listen, to dream and to imagine, in order to cross together the threshold into another time in which we can conceive ourselves as a part of a complex constellation of interdependent relationships.

In a transcultural series of film screenings, film curator Florian Wüst questions and illustrates the present social upheavals in Chile. He includes in this the long-term temporal dimension of history and memory and how these help us to comprehend current developments.

The exhibition is accompanied by an editorial intervention by Elektra Wagenrad, and an online publication that will accrue over the exhibition period, continuing the gathering of fragments, observations, thoughts, discussions, and shared exploration in a digital space: www.constelaciones.xyz (launch: November 11, 2021)

Curators: Bettina Korintenberg, Enrique Rivera
Artists: Elisa Balmaceda, Claudia González Godoy, Barbara Marcel, Elektra Wagenrad, Florian Wüst
Project coordinator and assistance: Constanza Güell
Team ifa Gallery Stuttgart: Stefanie Alber, Mohammad Faisal Aleefi, Valérie Hammerbacher, Rainer Koch, Davorin Strauss, Clemens Wildt
Team 15 Bienal de Artes Mediales: Florencia Aspee, María Contreras, Francisca Gabler, Paulina Godoy, Eugenio González, Javiera Guajardo, Miranda Muhr, Gabriel Ortega, Catalina Ossa, Mirko Petrovich, Javier Sanfeliu
Graphic design: Santiago da Silva, Cecilia Breña