Resurrexit, Museo de arte contemporáneo, Valdivia (Chile) 2006

Resurrexit-Valdivia is a multimedia work comprising an installation and an athletic ‘performance’. For the performance, the (14) fourteen loaves of bread were placed on the embroidered handkerchiefs around an area of 10 kilometres adjacent to important historical sites, landmarks, monuments and buildings in the city of Valdivia, in the south of Chile. The artist then ran this circuit, dropping a branch of the Canelo tree as an offering as he passed each site. At the end of the performance, the loaves of bread and the embroidered handkerchiefs were collected by artists and student s of the New School of Visual Arts of the UACH (Universidad Austral de Chile) and lined up along the museum floor as a component of the installation.

Resurrexit-Valdivia is visual multidisciplinary reflection, made up of symbols that fluctuate in time and in human history… emblems which in essence make up my own identity. This work therefore allows me to explore themes related to my spirituality, my social role, and my physical and psychological make-up. Also, it confronts symbols and changes in the physical state, and allows me to de-construct and reconcile in my personal memory the myth of bodily/physical resurrection.

The installation components bear the emblematic weight of the dominating religion (my personal history). Moreover, the athletic performance/run is a competitive act of stamina and speed. The bodily stresses caused by speed, climatic influence, sweat and mental attitude undergo a transformation to become an act of faith and cleansing, all of which contribute to a personal understanding of a new symbolic “resurrection”.

Finally, Resurrexit is a new effort to release my identity from its religious/symbolic chains which are entrenched in my memory. Through this artistic act, I seek to illuminate my inner consciousness and experience first-hand another myth…the resurrection of my ancestral mind.