Waters

that flow

Words and artworks by Seba Calfuqueo

Translated by Laura Strang Steel

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My work has been developed in various formats: ceramics, photography, installation, performance and video, among others. I am interested in addressing the concept of identity with a critical view that reviews class, gender, race and sexuality - all defined by the parameters left by colonialism. Western colonialism indoctrinated us with a philosophy based on binary positions, defining certain fixed concepts as opposites: civilised/barbarian, feminine/masculine, euphoria/dysphoria, white/black, among others.

Species are not binary - we move through waters that adapt to different containers of our experiences and corporeality. From this place, I have tried to think of my work as a space where questions are opened around these themes, questions that complement each other with the view of the audience and art as a pedagogical tool.

My art usually works with my body and biography as a starting point. Such as the territory that I inhabited, Wallmapu - which means having a relationship with the past, with our ancestors - then the personal becomes public, it becomes a point of connection with others. This archive is also an important place for the elaboration and investigation that gives life to these works. It interests me to think of history as a legacy of this western tradition, which left Indigenous peoples without a voice, without agency. This has to change. We must question this absence and historical silencing. Through the review of images and stories, I think about the relationships between aromas, sounds and visuals that lead us to think not just as human beings, but as ecosystems linked to other species - becoming forests, waters that flow, fungi that reproduce themselves or hermaphrodite plants.

My artistic work is also conceived as an urgent need to think about nature. The waters from the territory that I inhabit, Chile, have been privatised since 1981 by the water code, which was enacted during the dictatorship. I think of my art, together with those of other Indigenous artists, as a claim for the land and a return to its care.

Alka domo, Video performance, 2017. Alka domo is a performative work that references the feat of Caupolicán, a Mapuche leader who was elected by his community after completing the challenge of holding a log on his shoulders for two days. The artist holds a hollow trunk made of coihue, an ancestral wood from the South of Chile, alongside seven pairs of high heels - each one representing one of the colours of the LGBT flag. “Hollow” is the derogatory term that Chilean people use to refer to non-heterosexual people.
Serie Esporas (Spores Series), Photographic series, 2021. The work proposes to reflect on the integration of the body to ecosystems currently present in nature, and how they are a reflection of a collective way of thinking. Photographs by Diego Argote.
Serie Esporas (Spores Series), Photographic series, 2021. The work proposes to reflect on the integration of the body to ecosystems currently present in nature, and how they are a reflection of a collective way of thinking. Photographs by Diego Argote.
Tantas veces apümngeiñ (So many times, apümngeiñ), 2016. This project references the research of authors Conrado Zumelzu, Hernán Curiñir and Pablo Silva which focused on the executed and missing people of Chile that belonged to the Mapuche nation, between 1973-1990. The artist worked with the surnames of 179 of the listed Mapuche people, who mostly worked in areas related to the land and agriculture. Behind the body there is the phrase “Tantas veces apümngeiñ” which translates as “we were annihilated/finished”. Photograph taken at the 34th São Paulo Art Biennial.
Cuerpos en resistencia (Bodies in resistance), 2020. A 15 minute performance that utilises the body, the resistance, the colour blue, the sound and the relationship of the hair and the Mapuche world view, straining colonial perceptions of gender built by the western world. Photograph by Cristian Arriagada.
Ko ta mapungey ka (Agua también es territorio (Water is also territory)), 2020. The work establishes a poetic and political relationship between the water, the body, the Mapuche language and the territory, seeking to question the historical bonds between water and the Mapuche people in relation with the neoliberal extractivism present in Chile and its model of water-privatisation. Photograph by Diego Argote.
Fluir como la cascada, Flowing like a waterfall, 2022. A performance that took place at the UK’s Serpentine Gallery in 2022 as part of the Queer Earth and Liquid Matters exhibition.
Fluir como la cascada, Flowing like a waterfall, 2022. A performance that took place at the UK’s Serpentine Gallery in 2022 as part of the Queer Earth and Liquid Matters exhibition.
Tray Tray Ko, 2022. A six-minute video performance. The trayenko (waterfall) is a vital and sacred space for many of the Mapuche people’s practices. The flow of water is linked to the lawen - medicinal herbs that grow near water bodies. STILLS FROM tray tray ko, filmed by Sebastián Melo.

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Words and artworks by

Seba Calfuqueo

Seba Calfuqueo is a visual artist and curator of Mapuche origin from Chile. Their work recurs to their cultural heritage as a starting point in ord… Learn more

Translated by

Laura Strang Steel

Laura Strang Steel is an Edinburgh born freelance teacher and translator, based in Medellín, Colombia, where she works and is bringing up her two b… Learn more

This article is part of Issue #12

Cover of  Issue #12
Cosmology Indigenous Art Resistance

In this special edition of WtLF we invited Indigenous activist Txai Suruí, of the Paiter Suruí people, to guest edit the entirety of issue #12. The…

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