In conjunction with Fundación AMA -which supports the process of internationalization of Chilean art by sponsoring exhibitions of national artists abroad through the loan or donation of pieces-, we highlight ten contemporary Chilean artists who have entered the scene of the world's top museums and art galleries to stay.
It was in 1964 when Violeta Parra was installed at the Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre's Museum of Decorative Arts with a solo exhibition of 23 harpilleras, 20 oil paintings on canvas and wood, and 13 wire sculptures. Violeta was not only the first Chilean artist to achieve this, but the first in all of Latin America, including men and women.
Little by little, different Chilean artists have been gaining space in the most important museums and galleries of the world and are achieving what only a few, such as Roberto Matta, considered the last representative of surrealism, did before.
Cecilia Vicuña
Poet and visual artist trained at the University of Chile and with studies at the Slade School of Fine Arts at University College (London), she is one of the most iconic contemporary artists in the country, with multiple awards and projects in the most important museums and cultural spaces internationally.
His work deals with topics such as the native peoples of Latin America and the world, the ecological crisis, human rights and the modern world. He has created multiple variants of the "Quipu" (knot notation) since the 1960s. His visual work is part of the collections of major museums around the world, such as the Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM).
In April, he will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 59th Venice Art Biennale, the most important prize awarded by this event, considered one of the most prestigious international art events.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
Guggenheim, New York: Spin Spin Triangulene
Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, London: Hyundai Commission Cecilia Vicuña
Collaboration of AMA Foundation and Caribbean acquisitions Committee for the donation of Quipu Womb to the TATE collection.
Witte de Witte Rotterdam: Seehearing the Enlightened Failure
MUAC, Mexico: Seehearing the Enlightened Failure
CA2M Madrid 2021 : Seehearing the Enlightened Failure
Alfredo Jaar
Chilean visual artist famous mainly for his installations in which he combines elements of photography, architecture and theater. Since he settled in New York in 1982, Alfredo Jaar has traveled the world with his work, which reflects political reflections, disasters and social conflicts.
His best known production is the series of works grouped in the "Rwanda Project" (1994-2000), which reflect on the genocide in that country. His interventions in large cities, such as "A Logo for America" (1987) -a pioneering intervention on an electronic screen in New York's Times Square-, and "The Cloud" (2000), a performative project on both sides of the border separating Mexico from the United States, are also well known.
His work has been exhibited in several biennials and museums around the world, such as Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden (1994), New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (1992) and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1992), and his works are part of museums such as MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York; the Museum of Art in Sao Paulo; the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. He has also participated in the Biennials of Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010) and Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), being awarded the 2013 National Prize for the Arts for the latter.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
53rd Venice Biennale 2013: Chile Pavilion by Alfredo Jaar
Guggenheim, New York: Alfredo Jaar: A Logo for America
MoMA, New York: Alfredo Jaar
Centre Pompidou, Paris: Frame of Mind (Etat d'esprit)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Yorkshire: Alfredo Jaar: The Garden of Good and Evil
MCA Chicago: Alfredo Jaar: The Structure of Images
Francisco Copello
Engraver, installer, performer, mime and dancer. He spent most of his artistic career abroad, mainly in Italy, where he studied painting, and in New York, where he took various dance, pantomime and engraving classes and participated in the underground scene, working in collaboration with artists such as Andy Warhol. He exhibited all over the world and was recognized with important awards such as the New York Council on the Arts (1971) and the Nicolas Copernicus in Krakow, Poland (1972).
Among his best known performances are: The Last Supper, 1971; The Mime and the Flag, 1975-1976; Arauco, 1977; Omaggio a Neruda, 1978; Lana Turner, 1983 and Misa Negra, 1998. He died in 2006.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
Hayward Gallery, London: DRAG: Self-portraits and Body Politics
TATE, London: A Year in Art 1973
11th Berlin Bienale 2020: The Crack Begins Within
Americas Society NYC 2021- 2022: This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965-1975
Voluspa Jarpa
She has become one of the most important names in national art and today she is one of the Chilean artists with the greatest presence in international circuits.
Voluspa Jarpa's work encompasses painting and installations, which reflect on the notions of the construction of collective history, identity and memory through historical documents. Her work has led her to exhibit in museums and art centers in Latin America and Europe, in addition to several international biennials including Havana Biennial (1997), Istanbul (2011), Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre (2011), Sao Paulo (2014), Shanghai (2018) and Venice (2019).
He has stood out with solo exhibitions such as the one he held at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), in the "Solo Projects: Focus Latin America" section of Feria ARCO in Madrid and in Mor Charpentier gallery with "Waking State". In 2019 he represented Chile in the Venice Pavilion with the work "Altered Views", in which he questioned European colonialism and hegemony.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
MALBA Museum, Buenos Aires: In Our Little Region Hereabouts
Mor Charpentier, Paris.
58th Venice Biennale 2019: Chile Pavilion by Voluspa Jarpa
Nicolas Franco
His work encompasses painting, photography, sculpture and touches on themes such as memory and archive, perception and representation with a great power of association that moves from the visual to the conceptual and vice versa. Nicolás Franco studied at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile, at the Complutense University of Madrid and at De Ateliers, Amsterdam.
His work has been the subject of twelve solo shows in museums around the world and has been exhibited in Latin America, Europe and the United States including, among others, Tate Modern (London); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Zurich); MEIAC - Museo Extremeño Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (Badajoz); Stroom Deh Haag (The Hague) and De Ateliers (Amsterdam).
Some of his most outstanding samples:
TATE, London 2019-2020: A Year in Art 1973
TATE Modern, London 2020: Yesterday and Today
Paz Errazuriz
She is one of the most outstanding and important photographers in Chile. In 1966 she studied Education at the Cambridge Institute of Education in England and in 1993 she completed her training as a self-taught photographer at the International Center of Photography in New York.
His photographs and videos have mainly addressed the genre of the social document. His work has been exhibited in Chile and internationally, highlighting his exhibition "Poéticas de la Disidencia" at the Venice Biennale 2015 and "Retrospectiva" at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid (2015-2016).
His work has been present in several exhibitions in museums such as the Guggenheim and MoMA in New York; he has published a dozen books and his work is in the permanent collection of the Tate in London, with his project "Adam's Apple", where he portrayed the brothers Evelyn and Pilar, transvestites in the brothel La Jaula de Talca.
In 2014 she received the Pablo Neruda Order of Merit, the Photoespaña award in 2015 for her series "Luchadores", of boxers from Club Mexico and was awarded the II Madame Figaro-Rencontres de'Arles for the exhibition organized by the Jeu De Paume museum in Paris, "A poetics of the human", where she compiles 150 images that make up her work.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
Venice Art Biennale 2015: Chile Pavilion by Paz Errazuriz
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles: Radical Women
Barbican Gallery, London: Another Kind of Life
MoMA, New York: Paz Errázuriz (Donation of work to the collection by AMA Foundation in 2017).
Guggenheim, New York: Paz Errázuriz (Donation of work to the collection by AMA Foundation in 2016).
Enrique Ramirez
His work combines video, photography, installations and poetic narratives. Strongly influenced by the history and geography of Chile, Enrique Ramirez articulates the notion of geography as a carrier of a historical memory. La imagen del mar condenses some of his main reflections on international migrations, the discontinuity of memory and landscape.
He has exhibited in Paris at Le Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, and other venues in France such as le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire. He was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2020, one of the most important awards in the art world and is part of the MoMA collection in New York.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
MoMA, New York: Ocean 33 ° 02'47 "S / 51 ° 04'00" N
Centre Pompidou, Paris: Incertains
MACBA, Barcelona: Crossing a wall
Javier Toro Blum
With a degree in Art from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a Master in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in London, his work focuses on visual perception and the phenomenology of space, and its subsequent emotional and psychological implications.
His group exhibitions include 21st Century Art and Design - RCA 2013 at Christie's London, Muse at Lempertz Berlin, RCA Show 2013 at the Royal College of Art, Paradise at the Salon del Mobile in Milan, Luz Sur at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Valdivia and Fisura at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, among others. His work is in the collections of the Royal College of Art and the Council for Transparency of Chile, as well as in private collections in Chile, Germany, England and Peru.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
Lempert, Berlin: "Muse ".
Sobering Galerie, Paris: Tout Ce Qui Est Droit Ment
Am Bjiere Gallery, New York: Transitions
193 Gallerie, Paris: Oeuvres de Javier Toro Blum
Patricia Dominguez
An artist and naturalist by birth, she holds an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College in New York and a Certificate in Botanical and Natural Science Illustration from the New York Botanical Garden. Her work focuses on tracing relationships of labor, affection, obligation and emancipation among living species. Today she is the director of the ethnobotanical platform Studio Vegetalista, a platform that seeks to produce experimental ethnobotanical knowledge, combining art, ethnobotany and healing cosmology. In 2020 she was chosen to participate in the international program Symmetry, an exchange space between artists and scientists at CERN (Switzerland) and the Alma and Paranal observatories (Chile), and contributed to the book "Documents for Contemporary Arts", Health edition, by MIT Press and WhiteChapel.
His major projects have been exhibited in Europe, Asia and America, at New Museum, New York; Wellcome Collection, London (2022); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; TRANSMEDIALE, Berlin; La Casa Encendida, Madrid (all in 2021), Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; CentroCentro, Madrid, and Yeh Art Gallery, New York (all in 2020).
Some of his most outstanding samples:
Wellcome Collection, London: Rooted Beings
Twin Gallery, Madrid: Cosmic Crying
Gasworks, London: Green Irises
CentroCentro, Madrid: There is nothing in the Middle.
Jorge Tacla
After studying art at the University of Chile, in the 1980s he moved to New York, where he has developed most of his career. His artistic production, based on a personal plastic language, has made him one of the contemporary Chilean artists with the greatest international presence. His work has evolved from painting images based on Afro-Latin and indigenous American music and culture, to a neo-expressionist, purely landscape and urban painting.
Jorge Tacla has received numerous distinctions and awards and his work belongs to prominent public and private collections. His works have been exhibited at MoMA, New York; Seibu Artforum, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New York; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Dublin Contemporary; The Bronx Museum, New York, the Venice Biennale and the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC.
Some of his most outstanding samples:
MoMA, New York: The New Portrait
Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art: Jorge Tacla papers
Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid: Sign of Abandonment
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