Exhibition “Commit to CHILE”
- Hifas Gallery, Libertad 304, Santiago.
- Until May 18th.
- Entry released.
“Commit to CHILE” is the title of the new exhibition that took over the showcase of Galería Hifas in Barrio Yungay. This is a montage made by the visual artist and goldsmith Milena Moena, which corresponds to a first view of the research that she has been carrying out for a year and a half.
This is about a campaign that was carried out during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), where people were invited to donate their engagement and wedding rings to “save” the country’s economy. In exchange they gave him a copper ring with the word “Chile” inscribed inside.
“Currently I am researching archives and press from the period and what happened to those stolen jewels. This is a preview of an investigation that continues. You will be able to see the process that will form a phrase bathed in copper that says ‘Woman is the great forger of the future’, a fragment of a speech that Pinochet delivers to women from the National Secretariat for Women and CEMA Chile in a speech made in 1973,” comments the artist.
The plan focused on women and their engagement rings, who were encouraged to remove them from their fingers and donate them to the Government Junta, for a supposed National Reconstruction campaign. The commitment, then, passed from their husbands to the country, understanding the latter as a more important entity to care for and bond with. Then a copper ring was given for each jewel donated, a ring whose only uniqueness was the green stains that she left on the skin after wearing it.
The installation by the artist Milena Moena seeks to decompose and turn those who look through the gallery’s showcase into witnesses of this process.
“It is a metaphor for that unknown evaporation, because today it is not known where the metals that once slipped between the fingers of those women rest, until the day they decided to donate their rings, because Chile needed to be rebuilt and their personal stories dissolved. in the homogeneity of fascism. Under this story, ‘the woman’ was transformed into a heroic piece, bearer of the future, shaper of the future,” they point out from the exhibition.
“In the blue of an aquarium, shining underwater, solid figures are observed that little by little dissolve. Particles that, as the days go by, will make the metal disappear. Words and forms that will dissolve their visible meaning in the rinse of this liquid, loaded with positive and negative ions, which cause the disintegration of copper. If we imagine this transformation in fast motion, we will remember video tapes being rewound, when everything is seen backwards. In this case, however, that return is the opposite, since instead of reaching a solid and static material result,” writes Vania Montgomery in the text that accompanies the installation.
More about the artist
Milena Moena Moreno (Santiago de Chile, 1994).
Visual artist and sculptor with training at the Universidad Chile (2016). She is currently studying the Master of Latin American Art, Thought and Culture at the University of Santiago de Chile. In 2017 she trained as a Goldsmith, taking private classes. She has worked as an assistant professor at the Complementary Emptying Workshop of the University of Chile (2021).
“From my artistic work I move through the areas of sculpture and goldsmithing, addressing sociopolitical themes, memory and feminism. Interests that have led me to investigate the body, capital, the permanent and the ephemeral. My conceptual explorations have led me to question the physical and symbolic layers of the materialities related to its political configuration, enhancing its deconstruction and possibilities of expansion, from the frictions that are intertwined with historical burdens. My interest is focused on two focuses; on the one hand, the aesthetic and immersive and on the other the ethical, as that which is assumed in one way, but which can always be situated from another perspective, from another place. At the same time, the community appears as a methodology, understanding that collaboration is essential to project ideas of a different nature,” he expresses.
More about Hifas Gallery
Hifas Gallery is a contemporary art space located in the Yungay neighborhood. What used to be a garage on Libertad Street is today a showcase that remains open continuously so that people passing by can approach the works without doors or intermediaries.
This is a collective initiative that was born from the experience of those who promoted Taller Ojo de Pez and Artistas Yungay (www.artistasyungay.cl). The gallery is integrated into the fabric of a heritage and intercultural neighborhood that is home to diverse origins, generations and experiences. Outside of traditional arts spaces, we seek to enhance encounters and foster transformative dialogues based on the visual arts with new audiences.