Mapuche Contemporary Art, an approach to a definition

To speak of "Contemporary Mapuche Art?, We need to address the significance of the word art.

This conceptual journey in search of the definition has already been done in Western philosophy and from this perspective does not define what art is finally Mapuche. But no matter what the trench in which we are located to identify this term, despite this, the art is in everything where human expression is manifested in the world, anywhere. Art is about everything that we understand that, whatever the reader to read it. Thus a learned reader will see art where the common people do not see. And so the people see art where the scholar will only waste. We will discuss both art and construction, and formal aesthetic of the highest spiritual expression. Perhaps in the world do not speak Mapuche art itself as understood in the Western world, but from the Western world if you can distinguish elements that allow art to speak of contemporary Mapuche. One of the concepts difficult to conceive within the contemporary Mapuche conception of art is to understand the integrated art, for example political, without being it official art. In Western culture, art is an ongoing quest integral in the integral art Mapuche culture is fundamental.

One element that helps to understand art is its dissociation Mapuche Chilean art, reaffirming the idea that the Mapuche nation is a people distinct from the Chilean society. Thus art is the expression that reveals our existence in the world. It is the yearning of each Mapuche itself express a feeling that is in the "heart? (Piwke). Arts & Economic power Economic power, predation engine that drives the Western world, which conditions the trial of how you look at the artwork. That is, it should see the individual as art is what the power demand. No matter the ideological dimension which originates the work and struggle against power, economic power, has a form of hypnosis over all other ideas, that drives only in the sense of affirming the idea captivating, but does not cause progress on the future leading to the development of human culture. Indeed, there is a condition in Latin America subjugated culture, in the majority of villages where the dominant ideologies condition the ways of seeing. The democratic exercise of art is expressed according to the pattern dictated from economic power.

A pattern that defines and articulates all the conditions which contribute to the experience of art is a fact. This power, to name one aspect, the device runs from senior visual control exercised in the world, from the ultimate source generating visual processing contemporary television. Television as a scalable concept, is the medium in which all the working ideological, religious, economic, values, philosophy, ie all areas of the human world mixtures, and the "final visual product? comes to individual components and processed, where the consumer interacts with the spiritual expression, but with the formal elements, designed to make those in power to constrain individual and collective mind. TV Box not put into enhancing the cultural differences. This visual body shows us the illusion of unitary culture. The chimera of nationality and equitably shared. This observation is remarkable to say that our personal worlds, social and group are intertwined and it is precisely for this feature is used this way for the state government. Therefore all our collective soul injury is a sore on each of us and by others, breaks we finally wound our collective desire.

Denial and the stereotype of Mapuche cultural condition is defined by the predatory power, so the Chilean mestizo alienated from their ancestral gene to better assimilate the fragile thread that binds the heart of the father languidly away. When the genesis of the artwork is not based on an engine part predator, is excluded within the cultural and commercial circuits. The power of this effect and called it Leviathan knows who will lead the world order. When the work is carried out from a common cultural heritage that falls outside the tolerance level of economic power, and makes more difficult the path of predation becomes "terrorist threat?. Mestizaje in Latin America and Chile "... have never been able to remove or erase the memories of what we were Indians, because we are the culture of heaven and earth, we are the descendants old and we are millions, and though the whole universe will collapse, our People continue to live even beyond the power of death "(Solemn Declaration, General Board of Chiefs, 1991). There is a reversal of the visual movement of people - Indian nation in many Latin American countries, this is a very common practice of the dominant state.

The denial of the existence, subjecting this lie as a controlled hypnosis, and those most affected are the indigenous people who form the majority of Latin American territory. Generally not open to the Chilean cultural environment where windows is the true exercise of being Mapuche within the medium in which it occurs. Within the definition of art if it is raised in a serious way, there is a failure, a complete ignorance of ancient aesthetics. A if and Chile Osorno and more specifically there is a percentage over 80% of the population of Indian origin, authorities artists, intellectuals, politicians, religions and the Chilean people themselves deny the existence of others and themselves. Ironically Osorno presents the world as a multicultural city of colonies, but for foreigners who have ever visited this land in its streets are old and distressed look of a people subject to an imposition of culture that keeps them trapped in a prison the body itself. For example, in the field of Rawe there a place that is sacred, and TXEN TXEN Kaikaifilu where ancestral ceremonies were performed, (still do) about the ancient culture cultural expressions are also irreducible with respect to the Mapuche philosophy to finally worldview.

This entails that through this event will involve what is called music today, performing arts, architecture, visual arts and so on. We can say that the history of art Rawe has about 2000 or more than 9000 years ... as the cultural elements of this sector are the same which are part of the discovery of human settlement at Monte Verde area between Puerto Montt and Osorno, findings that put in a situation of historical absurdity the theory of American settlement. You could say so many words and with great pride that Rawe sector has a history dating back about 9000 years at least. The art of all who see the world from this perspective is ancestral tradition and perpetuates the vision of world that we are part. Mapuche Art is contemporary, but at the same time is ancestral, it does not invent or signs that contain philosophy. Your extension is deployed freely according to the development of life itself.

In the Chilean television has shown viciously evil called "Mapuche conflict?, Following the unfortunate murder of Matthias Catrileo Peni, a member of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco" very unfortunate and hunger strike of Patricia Troncoso Lamu, as well peñi wrongful arrest dela LLitul Hector, caused by the application of the antiterrorism law inherited from the former dictatorship. In applying this law the State of Chile does not recognize the condition of the Mapuche people, ie a structure is not recognized, a society ready under cultural elements. One of the detached thoughts is that "the problem of the Mapuche people is not the existence of the inhabitants of Chile and its permanence in the territory, but transnational capital, predation on human dignity. The soul of Chilean society has a problem with himself and the problem it is loaded with the Mapuche people. "I might add that the Mapuche art is not art leftover Chilean Chilean art even today is colonial art, without identity in the most of the cases. mapuche art is the art of human beings living in the world, identity, territory, world view. Finally omit the cultural expression of a people is to kill the human being who is behind this town.

The Enlightenment and the world mestizo "There are only two worlds: the world of human beings living on earth, therefore the Mapuche - people of the earth and other beings that do not belong here but still roam the earth and beyond? Nana Francisca Aucapan. Ralko Lepuy, Pueblo Pewenche. Illustration is to show how supervised an idea, it is also the possibility of acquiring information in a practical and simple. Likewise when the artwork is a true copy of the idea, illustrates to the reader. Has occurred throughout the history of Western art. The Western world's cultural egocentricity that seeks to redeem exercise supremacy to other human groups according to their custom and likeness. The Decline of the West from the postmodern world is to consolidate a chaos of ideas that shows clearly the precariousness of the cultural system and who opposes the Mapuche world. The Chilean mestizo forms the largest percentage of the population of Chile, do not recognize their ancestral twin, the local and foreign. It is in this vain feeling sick leave this latent ambivalence, in which sits the predatory power.

The visual world known Mapuche Chilean mestizo, is based on the representation of the visual elements characteristic of Western culture in Chile. Everything before that enhanced chroniclers through the ancient inhabitants of this land (certainly a common practice of subjugating powers to glorify by lowering the guard about the real intention of usurping power) depicting situations on the future of primary early genesis of the Chilean national, local customs situations, recognition of self in this world. So just as nineteenth-century European photographers show in ambiguous situations in theater designs shown familles Mapuche. He calls this the settler based imagery of the nation, the Creole, the native. The folklore is to settle as illustrative for the Chilean colony or town, to understand illustrations and original sense of the world, where he created new life for their ancestors, in short to have a picture of himself in this other world . In recent times it did Violeta Parra, Victor Jara Chilean Mapuche descent artists. Folklore is the fake copy of the original reflection. The indigenous folk elements are used but dissociated from their origin.

The shapes, colors, sounds, are an interpretation of one's own idea, perhaps expresses the feeling of a colonized people cling to that by living cultural elements of this territory, establishes a fleeting difference that makes you own idea of itself. In this schizophrenia mestizos move our people, in the hope hidden. Social schizophrenia in the sense of not belonging to the expression itself. What unfolded live without finding one's own body. Isolated living between two worlds. Many times the picture with the Indian itself is not reflected, but the vision of what power means it has of itself and the image you want is to have the brother. The spiritual fragmentation makes us suspicious enemies many times. Non-acceptance of this reflex forced exile outside the social system. When you separate the image of being represented, appeals to that at some point in Western history is called the world of shadows. The same origin. For example, for Plato, the painting was a minor art because it was a copy, as opposed to the truth, finally things other than beauty.

Today contemporary art shows with advantage the beautiful is not necessarily true among other things in the world ... Perhaps not strictly speaking Mapuche art as understood in the Western world, but from the Western world if you can distinguish elements that allow to speak of Mapuche artwork. This is not new because already in the fourteenth century, Albrecht Durer, quintessential Renaissance man in northern Europe, to take some pieces of headgear, jewelry, jewelry, said the art that bring the highest art is that price, as high as the best European art, and these people could be called artists and creative geniuses?. In our hearts we are what we want to be, but each of our neighbors has an idea that rubs the value of ideas. But the Western artistic expression is that what the "piwke? (Heart) desires? Perhaps the answer is what the power demand or require that the dominant idea. When a Mapuche culture as expressed their desires of the heart, not only represents the action to represent the idea or desire, the act of creating and the product are from the source to the final realization of that desire reason.

The artistic gesture is in itself an expression of the Unitarian movement in which the reading of the cosmos, the human world and the object are one. Artistic creation, the work, are physically of the transcendent. The colors, rhythms, shapes, sounds, textures, movements, etc.., Are necessary tools to say things in the soul. The Mapuche people know that the image he has of himself is variable and depends on the location and socio-political context in which it is each individual. All matters relating to their worldview will determine the aesthetic vision to confront the dominant idea. The vision for the use of formal elements fits through an appropriation of the visual areas of the western world. From the use of the horse, the silver coins minted by the State of Chile, (with her trapelacucha are made), language, religion, politics are cultural elements that have allowed the survival of ancient culture, and split the longing of the heart finds its way and this path and finds it in himself and his peers. The natural geography determines the direction of the yearning of the heart, and instead involves worlds located in a physical and from there the world, into the universe.

Paradoxically can not talk about art Chilean Mapuche considering artworks dating back thousands of years of existence. Chile as newly formed nation state in 1825, the Spanish crown could also be placed in your art history, as the expression Mapuche territory during the Spanish conquest was according to them. The only way to justify that art is art Chilean Mapuche by the conquest of Mapuche territory. We are dealing with an idea to eliminate the desire of piwke by military might and domination by force. The original, native, does not require illustrate the same, the work by action of the heart yearning gestures. Mapuche Contemporary art is inserted from the standpoint of his own acts elements, media, techniques, concepts, ideas adapted. The gesture, action and the play The gesture is the instinct that is born of the yearning of the heart. The compromise option elements that cross established structures. The precise movement that causes subduing disorderly. The conceptual contortion that restores the proper order. The action is the completion of the work spaces and movements verbs that are characteristic of the Mapuche worldview.

The organization of the components and raw materials at a pace and in their own space. The work is the result of a process object that begins with the yearning of the heart. The forms they acquire are determined by the action, the gesture is the placement within the context of this work to thereby cause the release valve of individual and collective desire. Within the cultural assimilation of Chilean society against Western, we assume a strategic subordination and thus establishes the concept of art and make it his own. Ownership of the concept to survive and carry piwke longing to the outside of the self. All great art is born of the yearning of the heart, is what we mean intimate. Achieved or not our task a longing always there waiting for the right moment to come out and be flesh of the body. The dreams, whatever they are part of our worldview, tradition, ceremonies, and all components of the Mapuche worldview are the yearnings of the heart. They are desires that beat from the distance of time. La Nación Mapuche ancestral culture unfolds as each of the elderly, children, relationship with peers, siblings who are reflections, or the image that comes closest to the image that I feel that I represent.

This construction produces a network of own desires to be collectivized. Each of the men and women have this desire, without seeing the image on the outside but as something that exists and we know only in part, underground living there with me as, in this silent darkness are woven networks, networks of affect, unification of knowledge networks. Every man and woman has a piece of their collective history a fragment alone is not pressed, it just makes it in the collectivization of this portion. In the socialization makes sense both individually and collectively. In communication, conversation, the experience with the land, contact with nature is the remnant of the lost memory in the remote within the self. This desire itself is also collective. Mapuche culture has a body of ideas structured through thousands of years, art. The philosophy, technology, are elements that are to be invited to the Mapuche world uninvited. Just as each Mapuche makes his life a process, a way of learning to live as Mapuche society as a whole does. The recovery of the Mapuche are spaces both physically and conceptually this is an original process that integrates a nation it is their nature.

Technology is an everyday reality and the best "drug that keeps this sort of lethargy in our ancient people with their fancy gadgets create a better society. Art is a means of survival and continuity. Mapuche Contemporary art takes many forms, with styles that are not defined directly by the prevailing trends a priori, therefore the forms it takes is the appropriation of styles and languages ​​used within the context of Western art. Thus, a carved piece of wood depending on the gesture to contextualize this work takes on a character in another context. Also as Mapuche land have been stripped and that stripping was carried out within the whole field of ancient culture, just as the practice of art is a contemporary Mapuche appropriation of cultural elements from this universal and permanent possibility of establishing a survival. Survival is tied to the most remote spiritual expressions, and the contemporary Mapuche art is one more element to reconstruct the world that we own Mapuche art is the art of the culture process itself and the people, there is art if not There is recognition or liberty can not exist without the other is a univocal relationship is structured in unification.

* Written by: Julio Muñoz Uribe * image: the work of Julio Muñoz Uribe (lonko-keipul)

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