In this fourth version, the H Residency programme called RESIGNIFICAR invites 17 artists selected through an open call in the region of Antofagasta in Chile. The Artistic Residency space includes Training Laboratories in Calama and Alto El Loa, which are guided by two artists with extensive national and international experience: Raimundo Edwards Alonso (Chile) and Marcela Moraga Millán (Chile/Germany).
The Textile Ecosystem Laboratory, Stories of Mountains and Extractions, taught by Marcela Moraga Millán, invites participants to exchange experiences and knowledge about textiles in their various dimensions, to analyse the industrial and mestizo dimension of Andean textiles and their relationship with the territory intervened by mining extraction. The participants were invited to create a textile history, construct garments, and conduct a collective video performance in the territory.
Likewise, Laboratorio TRAZA, taught by Raimundo Edwards Alonso, visual artist and teacher, uses the methodology of walking as a practice of observation of the urban and territorial environment, from where the participants experience the graphic possibilities of the components of our urban and natural ecosystem, turning them into aesthetic reflections that reveal different aspects of their own nature and meaning.
These investigations allowed for the creation of an exhibition montage from which the participants will ‘re-signify’ the symbolic elements of our environment.
An exhibition at the Pablo Neruda Art Gallery, belonging to the Calama Culture and Tourism Corporation, testified to the research and experimentation processes of both Formative Laboratories. This year’s programme includes talks by artists in educational establishments and audience mediation activities, which aim to bring the public of different ages closer to the languages of contemporary art and, in the same way, to open up decentralised creative spaces, aiming at the development and training in the visual arts.
This initiative is supported by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage in collaboration with the Museum of Natural and Cultural History of the Atacama Desert, which belongs to the Corporation of Culture and Tourism Calama.
