Opening: Saturday July 29th 12.30pm
The term "syndemic" was introduced in the 1990s in anthropological medicine to describe two or more concurrent epidemics in a population, which enhance the disease burden. Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa uses this term as a metaphor to analyse the social movements that took place in Chile between October 2019 and March 2020.
In the first edition of the Julius Baer Art Prize for Latin American Female Artists, Syndemic received the first prize of this kind in Latin America, which aims to reward research work conducted by outstanding Latin American female artists.
Voluspa Jarpa's artistic practice focuses on the detailed analysis of official declassified archives and documents with an emphasis on hidden narratives. Her work explores notions of memory and trauma, frequently alluding to the Chilean socio-political situation and its position within the Latin American context.
Syndemic is a multimedia project featuring videos, musical pieces, installations, cartographies, animations, documents, reports, testimonies, photographs, paintings, and objects. It is the result of a collaborative teamwork involving female artists and intellectuals from different fields of knowledge, both scientific and humanistic.
Syndemic delves into the sensitive events surrounding one of the most dramatic social outbursts in the history of Chile and highlights the mechanisms of democratic consensus in tension with authoritarian institutional practices that conceal ways of silencing citizen discontent.
Eugenio Viola
Project financed by the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes, national scope of financing, call for proposals 2023 and by ProChile's Creative Industries Contest 2023; with the support of the Dirección de Artes y Cultura, Vicerrectoría de Investigación de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
