Dear {First Name}

Welcome to the August-September 2025 newsletter for La Capilla Azul, an independent, community-based exhibition space located on the Gran Isla de Chiloé, a few miles off the Patagonian coast of continental Chile. If you’re reading this from the other side of the world, thanks for your interest in what we do, and why we think it matters. Open to the public since May 2023, Capilla Azul presents exhibitions and programs centered on the distinctive visual, musical and literary traditions of the Chiloé Archipelago. As past readers know, our exhibitions until now have followed the format of bringing the work of an invited artist together in collaboration or dialogue with an artist from or near Chiloé. We’re making a brief pivot away from that model with our next exhibition, Espiritu Libre/Free Spirit, which offering a different type of collaboration, one that became necessary after the untimely passing last year of our friend, the artist and teacher Rafael Lara (1969-2024).

Rafael Lara in his studio at Academy of Arts Islas al Sur, Castro, Chiloé

As some contributors to our accompanying catalog point out, Rafael Lara’s absence from the material realm has left a yawning gap in the artistic life of Chiloé, to a degree that might not have been fully anticipated even a year ago, when the news of his death was still a shock to those who knew him. Beloved by innumerable students, past and present, at the Academy of Art Islas al Sur, he was even more greatly admired by his fellow artists, who speak unabashedly of him as a pioneer, even a visionary. If you weren’t fortunate enough to know him personally, nearly everything recorded about Rafael Lara the person might seem like a conspicuous case of self-mythification, except that with him the myths were almost always true. Fueled by the seriousness of his artistic vocation, his densely composed compositions sought to do justice to both the natural wonders and the Mapuche-Hulliche culture that he experienced in Chiloé. Meanwhile, Rafael replenished his unique sensibility as an artist by helping children discover their creative voices, and his commitment to achieving an empathic synchronicity with them can be felt in the dozens of examples of work by his students that will be incorporated in the Capilla Azul installation of Espiritu Libre: The Art of Rafael Lara, which will open on September 27, with Rafa's family, colleagues and former students present. 

EPIRITU LIBRE: RAFAEL LARA OPENS SEPTEMBER 27

Because we're still relatively new, those of us who work at La Capilla Azul might not have known Rafael Lara for as long or as closely as many of his friends and colleagues within the Chiloé art community, but when he and I began discussing this exhibition together a few years ago, Rafa made it clear that the two branches of his artistic vocation — creating and teaching — were inseparable, and that his exhibition in our space should reflect that. After he passed, my concern became how to incorporate these two halves of his being into a single exhibition, and if fellow-artists Aníbal Rocha and Camila Zacharelli hadn’t fortuitously appeared to offer their help, along with his daughter Angel Paz Lara Rodriguez and Rafal's former student Eduardo Munoz, the task before me might have turned out to be been insurmountable. My most sincere thanks to all of them for their support, along with those I might have neglected to name.

Given the space limitations of both the Espíritu Libre catalog [HERE] and this newsletter, we’ve prioritized Rafael’s work here over his students’, but that makes it no less of an honor to be able to fulfill my friend’s desires that his students have a starring role in the first overview of his art since his passing. Rafael’s commitment to teaching provides an opportunity to consider not just the potential longevity of his more indelible images for their artistic value, but also to think of his former students, most now adults and some with children of their own, whose ideas about art were fundamentally shaped by the transcendent spirit that he brought to his teaching. This widespread influence is part of the reason Capilla Azul has made this exhibition the occasion for our first catalog, in the belief and hope that Rafael Lara's legacy will continue to grow over time, both through the second-hand impact of his limitless generosity to others, and by the intense originality of his own artistic.

Rafael Lara, Kon Titulo Ancestral Mapuche Huilliche, 2019, woodcut print

The theme of art and young minds reverberates in this issue with a text by Capilla Azul co-founder Pablo Carvacho on the recent residency at Comarca Contuy by students & faculty of Universidad Finisterra, as well as an essay by Capilla Azul founder and co-curator Ramón Castillo on the distinguished trajectory of art historian, educator and curator that brought him to Chiloé and Capilla Azul several years ago. Finally, Estéban Perez, whose handmade animation works, along with Gianfranco Foschino’s video installations Home and Fenêtre, are still on view through September 20 in the exhibition Second Nature, offers a short yet revealing essay on his own artistic process, which is deeply rooted in close observation of Chiloé's natural wonders.

Dan Cameron, New York

At the rural schools of the Paildad Estuary—Apeche, Contuy, and Paildad—art is taught as not just another subject, but a way to breathe the land. Our art education program is born from listening to fine rain on the roofs, feeling the murmur of the tides that order the days, and sensing the patient gestures of weaving hands, all as experienced through the eyes and ears of children who regard the world with wonder. From our shared witnessing, an experience is designed that opens paths between the classroom, the community and the surrounding sea.

We work using a collaborative methodology in partnership with Finis Terrae University. Together with its Faculty of Arts and the Masters in Health Arts and Art Therapy, we co-design pedagogical paths that integrate artistic mediation, care, active research, and territorial relevance. Each cycle begins with work meetings where teachers, families, the Comarca Contuy team, and the academic team at Finis Terrae University agree on simple yet profound questions: What about this place is asking to be seen? What stories, crafts, species, and memories deserve to be told today? Based on these and similar questions, we propose photography, drawing, sound, body, and word workshops; sensitive cartographies; territory notebooks; observation exercises of flora, birds, and skies; and experiences with local materials—fibers, earth, water, natural pigments—that allow the landscape to enter the classroom with its own language.

When we invite artists to the territory, we do so from a place of hospitality and reciprocity. Before any workshop, we walk together: beach, wetland, forest, shore. The artist listens to the community, and the community recognizes an aspect of itself in the artist.

Within this observational fabric, the University contributes the presence of academics, graduates, and students in training, thereby expanding the intersections between local knowledge and contemporary educational practices. Their active role includes conceptual frameworks and teaching tools that nurture the process and the people: respectful mediation, pause times, attention exercises, spaces for speaking and silence. We work together on looking closely, listening to others, developing the confidence to speak and to share responsibility for the environment as a team. Further pedagogical follow-up from the University comes through support for teachers and students in writing texts, organizing archives, and reading images critically. The Contuy community library, currently under construction, will include materials that engage with these practices: books on art, heritage, nature, and knowledge of the archipelago, as well as a more specialized bibliography that the University will make available to enrich teacher and student reflection.

La Capilla Azul operates during these courses as an extension of the classroom experience, where educational processes are transformed into an active montage. The students themselves curate, write notes, and decide on routes for guiding their families through the exhibition layout, offering fresh readings of works they’ve become familiar with. These processes are always open: children show, explain, and guide; teachers accompany; neighbors observe and comment. The territory of curatorial practice, seen through the students’ eyes, becomes a form of shared community knowledge.

The Paildad Estuary School art program is based on a handful of simple beliefs, the first being that education is most powerful when it connects to the real lives of those doing the learning. Another is that beauty is a path to knowledge, not just an ornament; and a third is that the land teaches us, if we regard it with attention and respect. We believe that art, in its most human dimension, offers tools to inhabit the world with sensitivity and judgment, to recognize the dignity of each profession and each species that accompanies us, and to imagine, together, possible futures. Our alliance with Finis Terrae University currently enables us to sustain these convictions over time, coordinating training, research, and creation with the rhythms and affections of the Chiloé seascape. With their collaboration, along with the ongoing support of the Paildad Estuary community, we continue caring for what cares for us, convinced that education through art is both a right and a necessity, a way of seeing and co-existing that sparks questions, deepens connections, and, above all, reminds us that here at the edge of the water and the forest, we have everything we need as a community to create and grow together.

Pablo Carvacho, Contuy, Chile

The prospect of reconnecting with Chiloé back in 2018 was very appealing to me. On the one hand, it meant revisiting and reminiscing about childhood places But the greatest attraction lay in the possibility of ​​creating something cultural in that territory. This idea arose from a meeting with curator Dan Cameron, and the convergence of our shared interest as curators: an urge to develop an art biennial in the far south of Chile.

During my adolescence, I traveled with relatives to Castro, and after finishing my studies as a Professor of Fine Arts at the Catholic University of Temuco, I created drawings and portraits in the plazas in various southern cities: Valdivia, Osorno, Puerto Montt, and Castro. To save money and energy, it was the last trip I took to continue my university studies in Santiago, and a very enriching experience. I explored places and met people whose images had faded after almost forty years, and now, each time I travel to Chiloé, those early memories are re-activated in fragmentary moments.

My reunion with the island occurred in March 2016, when Dan invited me to evaluate this major curatorial undertaking, and so from Santiago we traveled to Puerto Montt, and after boarding a ferry across the Chacao Channel, arrived at the Isla Grande de Chiloé. At that moment, a fragment of memory came back, of the stillness of the water and the green hills along the coast. That first trip was many trips at once, and we chatted for five hours until we reached Castro. The recompiling of lives was inevitable as we shared musical tastes and debated whether to listen to Shuffle or a playlist. I talked about my post-doctoral studies in Barcelona and my years as Director of Visual Arts at the Universidad Diego Portales, to my current work as an independent curator, which I currently develop at the Nemesio Antúnez Foundation and the Federico Assler Foundation. We had time to revisit many moments in our lives, and to recognize shared friendships, which made the journey increasingly easy. At times we were distracted by a tree, the clouds, or a view of the archipelago that made us stop the car to get out and take a closer look. Our sense of wonder increased as we resumed our journey, since around every curve lay a new visual adventure, and there are many, many curves in that road.

A second fragment of memory arrived while eating mariscos at El Mercadito. It was impressive how those flavors were still latently in my body, and then I suddenly remembered one of the jobs I did forty years ago, which was to make drawings for a family who wanted portraits. I produced them in record time, and with the fee in my pocket, enjoyed an unforgettable meal of mariscos at the Castro market.

Marcela Contreras, Clara Yañez, Dan Cameron & Pablo Carvacho, Comarca Contuy, 2018

We arrived in Castro, and through different Airbnb accommodations, discovered places, people, and artists that Dan had met recently on a prior trip with the artist Gianfranco Foschino, and continued meeting on his own. We began our journey with Patricio Rojas, owner of the art gallery and café Palafito Patagonia, and soon enough, the appointments and encounters multiplied, filling a busy schedule of meetings and studio visits. We were still envisioning a large exhibition project like an art biennial, but we concluded that there wasn't much point in doing something beyond the territorial and human scale. We realized this in part because of the limited interest from local authorities and institutions, but also because we had been imagining an articulated art system that, in reality, had its own form and history. Despite recognizing that a biennial wasn't the best use of our abilities, we did recognize a very evident need among Chiloé creatives for visibility, in the form of a place to exhibit their work, and share it with people interested in art and culture. We had long and unforgettable conversations with Silvia Rivera, Andrés Ávila, Raquel Aguilar, Anelys Wolf, José Triviño, Guillermo Gres, and Rafael Lara. I dare say those conversation aren't over yet, which is why each time we meet again, the dialogue resumes with the same intensity as it left off, only now it resonates beyond the Archipelago, in Puerto Varas (CAAM and Bosque Nativo) and in Santiago (Patricia Ready and Montecarmelo), as, little by little, a growing interest in recognizing new creativity from southern Chile has spread.

Dan Cameron in Silvia Rivera's studio, Castro, Chiloé, 2018

Given the premise that as curators, we not only make exhibitions, but generate mental and physical spaces to exchange sensations and world views and, above all, listen to makers who have so much to share, we felt at that moment that we’d discovered a new role in the midst of this culture. We could begin to mediate and connect the worlds between different thresholds as we advanced through the portal of imagination that is Chiloé — “portal” being a frequently heard word in the Archipelago, indicating an instance where the real and the supernatural naturally coexist.

The third fragment of personal memory from those 1980s was fully human. When I visited the island in 1989, I was struck by the personal warmth and the trust that could be placed in people I'd just met. I felt the same way as we visited different places in 2018, 2021, and 2022. During the 2021 trip, n the midst of visiting with various artists and checking out potential venues, we arrived at Comarca Contuy, a residence where Dan had previously stayed, although at the moment his enthusiasm for returning was still incomprehensible to me. On my first glimpse of the Contuy Region, however, the landscape that opened up was so generous and noble that I immediately understood its appeal. Moreover, when we met our hosts, Pablo Carvacho and Marcela Contreras, who have now been running the residency and its associated cultural projects for over ten years, they radiated such warmth, generosity and clarity that we immediately became friends, and that friendship has deepened with time. Last but far from least, Comarca Contuy soon become an irresistible second home thanks to the gastronomic adventure that each meal, as prepared by Marcela's hands, taste, and expertise, becomes.

After the Comarca became the point of arrival and departure for our meetings, it was even more stimulating to the imagination to contemplate their old Chilote chapel, which stands at the Comarca's gate, and served for years to store sheep's wool. Since by definition a curator is a seeker of spaces to initiate tiny revolutions, Dan and I soon internalized the notion that the small wooden chapel, painted in various shades of blue (and underlying colors) and worn by rain and sun, was the best response to our concerns about the human and material scale of our endeavor. It must also be said that this image of an exhibition space was already floating around the Comarca, since Clara Yáñez, Pablo's mother, had envisioned it from the first time she saw it as a place to house her sculptures of angels and demons. In fact, it soon became apparent that Clara had to be the one to launch the space, and so it was that on May 13, 2023, a completely remodeled Capilla Azul was inaugurated inside, while remaining archaeologically intact outside. Our first exhibition, Interior Sea, featured Clara’s sculptures and works in many media by painter Guillermo Grez, and as in every happy tale with an open ending, three years later,"the rest is a story that has just been written.”

Ramon Castillo, Santiago de Chile

all photos in this section by Ramon Castillo

My way of seeing and making animated films is deeply rooted in southern Chile, particularly Chiloé and its surroundings, where memories, landscapes, and traditions intertwine to generate a visual poetic. The fascination that Chiloé Island has held for me has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Its myths, rituals, and landscapes have shaped my imagination and my creative process.

In my work, this territory is not just a setting, but a living character: its changing light, persistent humidity, dense skies stirred by the Patagonian winds, the morning mist that sometimes extends until midday, and the enveloping sound of the rain create a unique atmosphere. I am interested in capturing not only the image of the south, but also its spirit, carrying its burden with me in drawings that are translated into stories. 

Installation of drawings by Estéban Pérez, La Capilla Azul, May 2025

I view traditional 2D animation as an art form deeply connected to manual craftsmanship, to direct lines on paper, and to the patient rhythm of frame-by-frame. In a world dominated by digital immediacy, I find in this technique a space of resistance, a language that uniquely captures the essence of drawing in motion. I seek an animation that breathes through the material; I don't seek to hide the craft, but instead to reveal it.

Esteban Perez, Puerto Varas, Chile

In July, we received our first U.S. foundation grant, from the Lewis Family Foundation, to support our community-based programs, exhibitions and publications. Not only does this grant represent important validation of our grassroots efforts, but it inspires us to further our work in developing and maintaining a meaningful platform for contemporary art in rural communities. As a 501c3 public charity registered with the IRS, all cash donations to La Capilla Azul in the U.S. are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by current law.

One factor worth mentioning that made La Capilla Azul attractive to funders like the Lewis Family Foundation is that we started out just four years ago as a GoFundMe campaign and a dream, and we’ve only made it this far thanks to the enthusiasm and generosity of readers like yourselves, who’ve donated from your own pockets with no tax benefits at all. As we prepare for our September and January exhibitions and programs, including the opening of the Contuy Community Library, the need for your support is even greater than ever, so please consider activating the click below to make a cash donation to La Capilla Azul. Thank you from all of us for your ongoing support.

Capilla Azul is part of Comarca Contuy, Queilen, Chiloé, Region Los Lagos, Chile