Testimonial Spaces, the theme of Chile's pavilion at the recent Venice Biennial 2021, opened to the public on the 18th of January at Santiago's Museum of Contemporary Art.
Curated by architects Emilio Marín and Rodrigo Sepúlveda, Testimonial Spaces brings together 525 paintings based on testimonies and everyday stories from the José María Caro neighbourhood in Santiago, in line with "How will we live together?", the theme of the biennial curated by Lebanese architect Hashim Sarkis.
Chosen by Christele Harrouk (ArchDaily) as one of the best national exhibitions at the Venice Biennial 2021, the pavilion featured historian Juan Radic, who collected the stories, which were then turned into paintings thanks to the work of 21 artists led by artist Pablo Ferrer.
In this regard, Sepúlveda, in conversation with ArchDaily last June, identified the collection of paintings as "a universe with many dissonant voices that in the end do not try to answer a single question, but are experiences that are narrated from a particular memory or recollection". For his part, Marín explained the idea of the pavilion in the original montage of the Arsenale in Venice:
This is a dark ship. It has a single entrance of light that is not so significant [...] We needed a neutral place to show the paintings and we were interested that the space - what is on the outside - denied what was here.
The pavilion, a blue wooden parallelepiped, propped up by slats on four of its sides, contains the paintings inside. However, the bracing does not play a structural role. As Marín explained at the time, "it emphasises this idea that it is supporting these narratives that are relatively fragile. It's more symbolic, because it doesn't really support the building, but it does produce an effect that we were interested in".
While in the original installation the pavilion is open to the sky, in the case of the Museum of Contemporary Art the pavilion's ceiling is covered with a structure designed ad hoc for the conditions of the museum hall: a space larger than the Arsenale hall, double in height and under a glazed metal dome that naturally illuminates the museum hall.
Testimonial Spaces is open from Tuesdays to Sundays until the 9th of April 2022 at Santiago's Museum of Contemporary Art. Admission is free.
Technical Specifications
Creators: Emilio Marín and Rodrigo Sepúlveda
Curator: Cristóbal Molina. Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage of Chile
Content direction: Pablo Ferrer, Emilio Marín and Rodrigo Sepúlveda
Design: Emilio Marín, Rodrigo Sepúlveda and Alessandra Dal Mos
Historian: Juan Radic
Graphic identity: María Gracia Fernández
Museography: Pablo Brugnoli
Lighting consultant: Victoria Campino
Organisers: Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, with the support of the Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DIRAC), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile.
