painters-from-chile

"Even in the ’60s, the ecological disasters had begun, and I think by focusing on dissolution and regeneration of the lifeforce, I was instinctively responding to that pain, the pain of the ocean, the pain of the sand. I walked on this beach as a kid and the sole of my feet would get black from oil, everything was already blackened. That was 50 years ago. We have lived with this denial and destruction for 50 years, and when you think of the damage that those 50 years have done, if there’s a future for humanity, those 50 years are going to be known as one of the most criminal."

"Only by becoming collectively aware of the pain we inflict on each other is there a chance for change, for a new moral code to prevent it. We need to archive not just art and literary works – often the record of the unacknowledged behaviour we have witnessed, or felt within – but also its effects on others. The social context makes change possible."

"If you think that you don’t know, you don’t know. But if you think that you may know, if you think that it’s perfectly possible that you have a knowing, then you can find it. So it’s a matter of opening. It’s a matter of releasing the structures that have been imposed upon you, realising that every form of education is an imposition that’s coming from outside your being. I think the liberating force of art and poetry is that it releases you from that, and it puts you in the place of discovering, of exploring, of acknowledging that you have senses, that you have awareness, that you perceive and are paying attention to the precise form of those perceptions. That’s the joy of the poet, the joy of the artist, to focus completely, zero in on those perceptions and see the universe expanding out of ‘a grain of sand’, as William Blake said. Everything has infinite possibilities of knowledge and that’s what it means to be human. We have been brought up to believe that the machine knows better than we do. Everybody believes that now. That’s preposterous! Machines only know how to do operations, they can’t imagine, they can’t imagine the unimagined, they can’t travel like we can to the end of the galaxies just by thinking about it. So, why are we so willing to renounce our agency as creators? That is what is troubling."

"Chilean Cecilia Vicuña is obsessed with constructing a new way of writing poetry, of uniting fragments and objects through conjunctions and through the elaboration of well-arranged, pre-fabricated words. Her poetry, which reflects a gaze filled with beauty and seduction, implies a new configuration, as well as the constant knowledge that language is the legacy of women."

"Plant your will!"

"words are the loom of the stars life's breath"

"words are the inner star."

"From the start, my work has been an interaction between art and poetry."

"I began to define my work as “about to happen” in the 1970s. This is my view of how art exists: art is not what you think it is, but art is what is about to happen. It’s consciousness and awareness."

"Some of the greatest Latin American poets have been women. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, María Sabina, and Violeta Parra are among them, but their true place in the history of poetry has yet to be fully acknowledged."

"We have scholarship and scientific proof that climate change exists, so what is it going to take for people to understand and participate?"

"(What did ecofeminism mean to you in the 1970s and what does it mean for you, today in 2020?) CV: First of all, I never heard of the term ecofeminism in the ’70s, no one was using that term. [Laughter] I don’t know if anyone used the term to classify their art. I was thinking about it–I was doing it in the ’60s–I was working through what I was seeing and feeling while living in Chile, you know and being near the South Pacific Ocean. I was doing and making what people now call land art long before that language existed as a name or concept, and I’m not the only one either who was shaping the movement without using any terminology to define it."

"If you think about human beings, [laughter] people have been people for almost a million years, and what we understand as art and art history is only a fleeting moment in that story."

"For me, I think my inspiration is the attitude and the feeling that you are here to sense, feel, shift, relate, and dance with art."

"My own indigenous history was erased—my mother and grandmothers were made to feel shame about their DNA. With my poems and performances, the quipu and the spirit of those ancient cultures are activated again."

"Our understanding of time is so limited. We have very basic markers of time. We live and we die, but what else? In my opinion, a poem is created outside of time entirely. A quipu, on the other hand, is like traveling through time. We all experience this ability to travel back and forth in time in our souls, in our imaginations, and in our hearts. Mathematicians and physicists attempt to create these fantastic theories and equations, but I have been making art about this all along. I think that poetry has given me this gift of knowing. Not every poet has this. I think it is reserved to certain cultures, perhaps. One must open themselves to these other forms of knowing, but Western cultures have suppressed this. I call it a colonization of the mind."

"(Would you say that your practice seeks to confront that ancestral trauma?) CV: I don’t think my work confronts it as much as faces it. In other words, it is my point of departure. I don’t think it’s something that can even be confronted because it has already happened. You have to allow for your being, your soul, your spirit, and your body to feel that and become fully aware of its importance. We now live in a culture that denies pain and denies trauma, and therefore if you deny that, not only are you bound to repeat it, but you’re bound to live in a world of lies. I think it’s very dangerous not to acknowledge such things. I think it is probably our first task. Otherwise I don’t think there’s going to be any more humanity."

"Every living thing is nature. I mean, why are we on this suicidal move, and why is it that people refuse to see what we are doing to the environment even though we all feel it? That is the real question for our times. Why are we indifferent to our own death?"

"The position of poetry in oral cultures is of tremendous power and reach. In fact, the oral poets say this plainly: the reach of an oral poem is infinite because it can be sensed, it can be heard, it can be told, it’s alive and moving and changing."

"Western education is about teaching that knowledge belongs to an elite. Therefore, you either join through a difficult long struggle or you are devoid of any value. So that is the teaching of this culture, there’s something ingrained in the system and worldview, which we know not to be true. I have done many educational projects with Indigenous peoples and that is one of my principles: that you don’t teach what people ‘ought to know’. On the contrary, you let them discover their own wisdom, they’re own insight, they’re own realisations – those which are infinite once they relax into seeing their own self, their own being. It’s a human thing, everybody has this power and this gift. It’s not something special."

"I'm writing a prologue for the Ajy Tojen like nothing ever read in literature. (1964)"

"Long live the thieves! They don't make a lie of their lives in this wormy society. They are what they are. Sincere in their disgrace. Working with them I've learnt the importance of loyalty and honor."

"Raquel Jodorowsky's poems, in form as well as content, have had an enduring impact."

"I remember her as both compact and graceful, shorter than me but with contagious energy. She had long dark hair and eyes that seemed backlit by a magical knowing. Having traveled from Peru, she brought with her its tenuous Andean air and wailing reed pipes. Vivacious and determined, she filled a room with vibrant power. Her poetry captivated us all."

"Raquel was also clearly accustomed to being a lone woman among men. But she operated on a different strata, not because of her gender but because her lifestyle and goals situated her beyond all social constraints. When she read her work, the air turned electric. We listened in awe."

"Another of Raquel's letters included a few lines that continue to resonate with me. She wrote: "You can't imagine, my brother, how much I've thought of our children. In all they have yet to touch, create and do. There is space, I say this from my heart, to reconstruct the world." Today Raquel is long gone, and I am thinking not of our children or grandchildren but of my two young great-grandchildren. Is there still space to reconstruct the world? It doesn't feel like it. And yet I believe that the spirit that palpitates in Raquel's work urges that reconstruction even more now than it did then. And that poetry and art remain our best resistance to the horrors that besiege us."

"In yet another poem, "Chewing" she writes: "This is the first time on earth for me / but I've been in other mouths before and my / heart has beaten in another tongue." And later, in an untitled poem, she describes herself: "Raquel maker of useless poems, says: / I want to regain my dignity / in the poorest spot on earth / dressed in a song to write a song / that doesn't pretend to amuse, honor or impress..." This work is a cry against social hypocrisy, entitlement, consumerism, complacency, ostentation and false idols. Without following party lines or using political jargon, poets such as Raquel honor values necessary to effecting positive social change."

"Generally, a revolution isn't enough. For me, it's changing one chaos for another. The important thing is to know that which from this moment is to be constructed."

"Poets appeared like flowers on the earth."

"Love, love, love, LOVE where do you hide forever? In the deep. But so deep in ourselves."

"At times I don't know if Hunger or the World allowing Hunger pains me more."

"you see bread is never enough and the soul is always hungry"

"Alone in my room, spinning with the whole world in my head from the day I was born."

"I learned to dream on the roof of the house"

"100 painters engraving their dreams on skin"

"if you feed us the bread of love we will all grow stronger with fraternity with pity with serenity,"

"Ay, those who can't shed light nor let others shed light."

"If you don't like this world we'll change it with kisses"

"I'm just a worm with metaphysical necessities wanting to rise but lacking sun"

"We are born old how life descends and one gets younger."

"I can climb to the top story of the highest poem and throw myself into the vacuum of a life."

"Life itself returns over destruction, putting out death. (1963)"

"We think of these people as primitive, uneducated, crude. But bringing myself a bit closer to their lives, I felt with emotion their capacity for kindness which they radiate, because they contain it, towards any stranger. Every civilized-intelligent person, whom I have known, tends towards evil, coldness, distrust of friend. Every civilized-intelligent person, seated one step above the rest, perhaps in order to spit down on them and shout; "because I am intelligent" -with the right to everything, above everyone. I've come to the conclusion, after briefly touching these high villages without aspirations, that intelligence is not one of the human values I respect. It's inhuman. Especially since those gifted with super doses of cerebral juice can't seem to live in peace with each other. They isolate themselves and retreat from a reality they insist on showing their back. There I found men who escape all definition. Perhaps "pure" is the poor word best fitting. I feel not that "I've arrived" in a marvelous world, but that "I've left" the inclement garbage of the city. (1963)"

"There is space, I say this from my heart, to reconstruct the world. (September 1963)"

"I was four thousand feet high. And more. In the heart of stone of the Andes. The open mouth of the earth surprised me, with its deep color. Like one of her fruits, the coffee bean...A difficult earth, only a bit of earth stretched over the sleeping eye of a volcano. One day she awakes, yawns and swallows an entire village with its men, its screams and its trees. (September 1963)"

"Another day the poor inhabitants lift themselves from the ruins and right there begin to reconstruct the roads; children without shoes, but with joy on their shoulders, return to carry the future. (September 1963)"

"The Nadaistas are a miracle. In many ways they are fighters. I've never seen a whole nation living the exaltation of poetry as if it were a political party. After my reading, I tried to save myself from the Cali effusion and I retreated to my dark room in the hotel. Success frightened me. Or the noise of the crowds. (1964)"

"«There are many ways to practice and make art. There are also various ways to express, such as comedy, sculpture, music, painting etc. Dimensions can be immense even in such small spaces as the head of a pin»."

""A child who does not renounce dreaming, the same as living with the adult life struggling to pieces and holds them with claws that poetry is capable of to find the magnitude of resources”."

""Cruz Vargas keeps his flat and surreal poetic style, characterized by simple language instrumentalized to sublime the love, the life and the nature"."