“A water of a hundred eyes”: Reconfguring liquidity in recent chilean contemporary art
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Abstract
© 2020 Taylor & Francis.This chapter investigates the status of water and the watery in contemporary artistic production in Chile. Examining a selection of works by artists Claudia Müller, Francisca Montes and Carolina Saquel, it argues that their treatment of liquid forms, while addressing issues such as the climate crisis, also ought to be understood from an embodied and gendered viewpoint. By looking at this selection through the theoretical prism provided by ecofeminism, it argues that, in these works, water functions as a poetic platform to rethink established readings of visibility, time, the landscape tradition and representation, constructing more embodied forms of production and spectatorship. In this sense, the motif of water here equates with the feminine as a force that always exceeds attempts to contain and control it. With this in mind, it considers three different bodies of water: fluvial, oceanic and lacustrine, each revealing a specific pairing of socio-political exploitation and aesthetic properties.