Destierro (Banishment) is the new exhibition by the Chilean visual artist Cecilia Zabaleta, granddaughter of the refugee Antonio Zabaleta, who arrived in Chile in 1939 with the ship Winnipeg. In this new work, she addresses the experience of circular exile or double exile that many republican exiles lived when, three decades after the great exodus from Spain in 1939, the military dictatorships established in South America led them to live a new exile.
The exhibition arrives at the Montjuic Castle coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the military coup d’état that gave rise to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile: a period also marked by political persecution, death and exile. The inauguration will be on Friday, September 15 at 12:30 p.m. and the exhibition can be visited until November 28, 2023.
Curated by Roberto Fuertes, Destierro proposes an itinerary through the artist’s life experiences and the testimonies of other exiles. The result is captured in compositions of fractured landscapes, allegories of cracked objects, and cartographic gestures achieved through oil and mixed media creations, with documentary fragments, interspersed with epigraphs from the author herself. The works reveal aspects linked to biographical fractures, human fragility and the marks of uprooting.
About the artist
Cecilia Zabaleta articulates the investigation of different artistic languages through testimonies and archival material. Memory and exile have been the thematic axes of her latest works, addressed from vital ruptures, fragility and traces of uprooting. This has given rise to exhibition projects such as Exilio, Boleto de ida, Migrante Memoria Migrante and Memoria Winnipeg exhibited in Santiago de Chile and Spain (Barcelona, Madrid and Gernika).
Dossier
Complementary activity
Opening
September 15 at 12:30 p.m.
Followed by a guided tour with the artist and the curator
Mediated visits with the artist and curator
Free activity, registration required
- September 16 at 12 noon
With the participation of the Chilean writer Thamar Álvarez Vega - September 22 at 6 p.m.
Workshop “Passages of memory”
Free activity, registration required
- September 23 at 12 noon
Related exhibition