Welcome to La Capilla Azul | |
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Hello Dan,
I'm writing you today to let you know, if you don't already, about La Capilla Azul (The Blue Chapel), an independent multidisciplinary exhibition space located in a restored 19th century wooden church in a rural sector of the island of Chiloé, off the southern coast of Chile.
I co-founded Capilla Azul in early 2022 following years of preliminary research into Chiloé and its artists with longtime friend and art historian Ramón Castillo. After fifteen additional months planning, fundraising, restoring and renovating with co-founder Pablo Carvacho, the three of us opened to the public in May 2023 with our first exhibition, Inland Sea, featuring works by Guillermo Grez and Clara Yañez.
Consistent with our mission, the project is centered on Chiloé and its unique culture, as expressed through works by local creators, presented in collaboration with artists from elsewhere.
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Why La Capilla Azul?
Home to 150,000 people, Chiloé's economy has traditionally been based on agriculture, fishing and tourism, and it is known for its rich history of writers, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists, as well as a vivid folklore tradition. Chiloé is mostly rural, and distant enough from the capital of Santiago that its cultural producers often struggle for national or even regional recognition. Once it became clear to us that there was room on the island for an independent exhibition space focused on Chiloé's dynamic visual culture, the decision to open La Capilla Azul was a no-brainer.
The story of how I became involved in the art and culture of Chiloé, and the origins of the research that started ten years ago and led to co-founding Capilla Azul — a space that I hope will come to represent a new approach to curatorial practice —, is far too lengthy to fit in an introductory newsletter. Which brings me to the main reason I want to include you in our growing community. I truly believe there IS a great story here, which involves a number of wonderful people who are inspired by sharing art in a pastoral setting.
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Above: Ivan Navarro rehearsing Vid Vida Vidajena with Enrique Millán in January 2024 Below: a portrait of Silvia Rivera taken in her studio in Castro, 2023 | |
We Are a Space of Art, Culture and Community
Capilla Azul operates under the umbrella of Comarca Contuy, a working farm run by artists, that also functions as a sociocultural organization devoted to sustainable agriculture and rural arts education. Most of the residents of the hamlet of Contuy, in the township of Queilen, live off the land, and because Chiloé is in a fairly remote corner of Chile, which happens to occupy a slice of South America that to some people already seems distant, I undertook this long-term commitment with the full awareness that a great many people whom I love and admire will never be able to visit Chiloé or Capilla Azul in person. But some of you undoubtedly will — more than a few already have —, and knowing this only increases the importance of a newsletter and website (www.capillaazul.com) to share our story with our future visitors as well as to our faraway friends. It means taking on the responsibility of articulating what La Capilla Azul represents for those of us who work on it on an regular basis.
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WE ARE ROOTS:
Raquel Aguilar and Voluspa Jarpa
On view through January 5
Raquel Aguilar and Voluspa Jarpa, working together, have created a choreography of poetry and material both inside and outside Capilla Azul. Within, a giant forest woman, dressed in leaves and birds, floats suspended from the zenith of the architecture. A physical extension of the Contuy forest, she brings with her its native trees, its undergrowth of fungi, and its ancient peat bogs. Hanging in front of her are the roots and fragmented trunk of a canelo tree, extending from the bell tower almost to the floor of the chapel. Accompanying the tree are fragmented satellite images of the full extension of the Andean massif, from Venezuela to Antarctica, that has for millennia provided the backdrop to the journeys of the culture and people of South America.
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ABSENCES:
Alfredo Jaar and Oswaldo Guineo Obando
Opening January 18
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An Overview of Recent Exhibitions | | |
INLAND SEA:
Clara Yáñez and Guillermo Grez
May-August 2023
Clara Yáñez and Guillermo Grez are two long-term residents of Chiloé who as artists have developed their creative practices in relative solitude, using the hallways, dining rooms and other domestic spaces, as well as conventional studios, to exercise their creativity in an expanded format. Craftsmanship meets fine art in both artists’ works, which are born from private motivations, and within an economy of basic means that are always within reach. Yañez works methodically in wood, carving animal and human likenesses from tree branches found near her home, while Grez produces dreamlike reveries using a wide range of media and techniques, including drawing, collage, clothing design and sculpture.
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WEAVING THE ISLAND:
Silvia Rivera and Ismenia Duamante
September-December 2023
Creating things with our hands can be a way to transform the present moment, making it materially legible through manual activity. Chiloé natives Silvia Rivera (painting) and Ismenia Duamante (basket making) are part of an expanding and increasingly visible cultural ecosystem of artisans and artists. Rivera, a self-taught painter, seeks to develop pictorial compositions that recapture the magic of her childhood memories and imagination, where fact and fantasy merge together effortlessly. Duamante follows a multi-generational ancestral practice of gathering, preparing and taming vines and fibers from nearby forests, gradually converting them into both utilitarian and representational forms.
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VID VIDA VIDAJENA:
Iván Navarro and Courtney Smith
January-April 2024
For three months, New York artists Iván Navarro and Courtney Smith transformed La Capilla Azul into a listening room for a new work of collaborative sound poetry, using compositional and participatory techniques they have developed collaboratively since they first began creating performative works a decade ago, in Chile and abroad, with small groups of active participants. The collective composition, performed over two consecutive days in public gatherings with Chilote musician Enrique Millán and eight participants from the Contuy community, was recorded live, then edited and mixed, with the resulting composition played continuously within the space for the duration of the exhibition.
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SAVING TIME:
Anelys Wolf and Sebastían Preece
May-August 2024
The choice to pair works by Sebastián Preece and Anelys Wolf for the fourth exhibition at Capilla Azul came, ironically, from our awareness that their respective approaches to making art bear little outward resemblance to one another. While Wolf is dedicated to the historically contained format of representational painting, Preece’ working methods involve a more improvisational response to the physical environment in which he finds himself. As for the results, their separate methods and ideas have produced equally distinct bodies of work that suggest no natural basis for comparison or assimilation. Nonetheless, Preece’s rigorous investigations into the mutability of materials, and Wolf’s narrative excursions into the past, share the essential trait of being able to induce within viewers a sensation of having been inexplicably lost in time.
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Detail of Sebastian Preece’s installation, Folding Time. | |
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I hope you will enjoy receiving future newsletters from me, which will include news of upcoming exhibitions; profiles of our artists, neighbors, collaborators and co-founders; projects organized by Capilla Azul at spaces outside of Chiloé; multiples and site-specific works made at Capilla Azul; our future library; curatorial workshops at rural schools; and our incomparable openings. Thanks for your interest and support.
Sincerely,
Dan Cameron
Executive Director, Capilla Azul
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LA CAPILLA AZUL:
Serving a rural community in southern Chile
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From left to right: Guillermo Grez, Silvia Rivera and Ismenia Duamante. | | |
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Capilla Azul is part of Comarca Contuy, Queilen, Chiloé, Region Los Lagos, Chile | | | | |
