Native Species brings together works by Catalina Swinburn, Cecilia Paredes, María Ossandón, Mónica Bengoa and Nicolás Franco, with the intention of flooding London with South American exuberance.
Latin American contemporary art is the product of transculturation processes, where various senses are amalgamated, generating new and novel readings for a foreign viewer. Under this premise, and like the naturalists of the 19th century, Aninat Galería has invited five contemporary artists from Chile and Peru to celebrate the specificity with which the languages of contemporary art unfold from our latitudes. Native Species is an experience of cultural approximation to the ancestral histories, the landscapes, the political history, the material products, and the sensibilities of five artists.
Catalina Swinburn invokes ancestral rituals through monumental cloaks, where the sacred, the profane, and the political converge. Her works "Quilla" and "Cocha" are born from the Andean geographies, and connect us with the cult of nature of the ancient inhabitants of South America, who venerated water (Cocha), like the Moon (Quilla) through the deification of natural forces and their elements.
Cecilia Paredes, through her striking and suggestive pieces, which use textile patterns to camouflage until she disappears, intends to illustrate the search that all people undertake for a place to belong without forgetting their origin.
María Ossandón reflects on the cultural construct of nature, executing miniaturist landscapes that replicate patterns of old broken porcelain.
Mónica Bengoa, in turn, tries to replicate photographic images through various and meticulous manual techniques.
Nicolás Franco composes, by means of archives bending and emptiness, the political history of Chile in the series "Yesterday and Today".
These works make up an essential proposal to understand the various visual strategies with which Latin American artists approach contingency and their cultural hybridization.
