K'acha Willaykuna Artists | 2019 | Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste

 

Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste portrait


Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste, a contemporary Mapuche artist from Chile, uses ceramics, installations, performances and video art to reflect critically on the Mapuche subject’s social, cultural and political status. Calfuqueo’s art explores cultural similarities and differences as well as stereotypes produced at the intersection of indigenous and Western ways of thinking. Sebastián Calfuqueo engaged in a week of workshops, performances, reflections, project support and exploration.

Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste was the first artist in residency hosted by the K’acha Willaykuna Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Arts and Humanities Collaboration. This collaboration was an interdisciplinary Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme initiative committed to critical engagement with Indigenous cultures of Abiayala (the Guna denominator for the American continent in its entirety).

Events | November 18-22, 2019

  • Welcome of the artist and discussion of the Andean & Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifact Collection | VIEW VIDEO​​​​​
  • Performance Workshop: Bodies in Resistance | VIEW VIDEO
    What does your body mean to you? How does a body connect to another body? What are some instances where you felt that your body movements were restricted? These are some of the questions Calfuqueo Aliste asked Ohio State students to consider during the Bodies in Resistance workshop. He emphasized the importance of the connection between one’s body and being. His workshop emphasized four actions using the body to communicate or for communication, involving sight, body movements, touching and voice. In a group exercise, Calfuqueo Aliste asked students to create their own expression of resistance. His overall message for students was to become cognizant of how our bodies occupy space and to ask ourselves what it means to be in relation. 
  • This Decoloniality? Reading Group
  • Dialogue with Faculty and Student Curators | VIEW VIDEO

    For Calfuqueo Aliste, the re-envisioning of exhibition practices means that, “it’s necessary to break up the archeology ways.” This means that we must challenge the traditional methods of displaying art and cultural objects which are often displayed and safeguarded in a vitrine. In his own way, Calfuqueo Aliste found a way to disrupt these conventional methods by shocking a museum director when he positioned himself within a vitrine. He stated that for the Mapuche people, “art and artifacts are meant to be used, not just to be displayed.” It is important that visitors interact with the art and experience it as something tactile. For Calfuqueo Aliste, “the collection needs to have a relationship with the public.” His dialogue challenges the Curator Working Group to re-envision exhibition practices and develop alternative of engaging the Ohio State community. 

  • Public Performance | VIEW VIDEO

Saint Sebastián/ Tañi kalül mongeley weychan mew
(Mi cuerpo está resistiendo)
2019

Accionado en The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, EE.UU.

La performance “Saint Sebastián/ Tañi kalül mongeley weychan mew (Mi cuerpo está resistiendo) utiliza la imagen de San Sebastián y su relación con el placer y la tortura. Por medio de un texto en audio, se le solicita a la audiencia comenzar a anudar el cuerpo del artista mientras su cuerpo permanece inmóvil, resistiendo.

Saint Sebastián/Tañi kalül mongeley weychan mew
(My body is resisting) 
2019

Performed at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

The performance “Saint Sebastián/Tañi kalül mongeley weychan mew (My body is resisting)” utilizes the image of Saint Sebastian and his relation with torture and pleasure. By means of an audio text, the audience is asked to start tying and knotting up the artist’s body while his body remains still, resisting.

Guisela LaTorre Reflection14.33 KB

Contemporary Mapuche and Chilean artist, Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste met with OSU students and faculty to discuss his artistic practices and current projects. The group discussed aspects of Calfuqueo’s work, expressed concern over the historical and recent political strike between the Chilean government and Mapuche people, and examined the Andean and Amazonian collection. Issues relating to institutional practices of categorizing and the representing of indigenous art and artists, the use of digital platforms and indigenous art, accessibility issues, and the re-envisioning of exhibition practices were further explored during this session

These events were co-sponsored by the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme, Center for Latin American Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Spanish and Portuguese Colloquium Series, Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, and Livable Futures Project.

Students who attended Sebastián’s public performance, talks and workshops throughout the residency had many takeaways:

“After watching Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste’s video performance, I felt many emotions. I was saddened by the response of those in the market who said many derogatory slurs to him; I was also proud of him for standing up for himself and not letting the negativity get to him: it was a very eye-opening experience. When he began to give examples in person of how one can use their body to express themselves and their gender, I was inspired by all that can be done.”
--Amira Dehmani

“Beforehand I was nervous and assumed [the workshop] would be an uncomfortable situation, but I left the inspired in the sense that I realized being uncomfortable is not always a bad thing. …. Being uncomfortable is a part of growing, and if the end result is learning to use your body to declare autonomy then that awkwardness is well worth it. This workshop helped to demonstrate to me that the body is a powerful political tool, and that is why it is so policed.”
--Miles Fulmer

“I am so grateful for this art performance and this class in general. I have started to evaluate things that I have previously accepted as normal.  I plan on incorporating this questioning of normativity in all aspects of my life after this class is over.”
--Sydney Gray

“Going into Calfuqueo’s workshop, I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised at how moved I was by his powerful performances. It was real time, interactive art and it allowed the viewer to be fully immersed in the process…. I left the workshop feeling a stronger connection to the feminist agenda, and a desire to bring physical resistance into more areas of my life.”
--Helen Mitchell

“As a queer man of color, Calfuqueo allows his unique experience with intersectional oppression to influence his art. His performance art workshop presented unfamiliar perspectives and newfound uses for the human body.”
--Avery Oberfield

“[This Workshop] taught me a wide range of ways to express individual creative truths using the body. I found it valuable to use my body as a Black woman because it has taken me so long to love and appreciate it and detangling it from the ancestral trauma that still has left its traces on the way Black bodies are viewed today.”
-- Nia Snelling

“The performance art workshop with Sebastián Calfuqueo left me feeling inspired to expand my understanding of feminism and the way that I relate to my body in a feminist context…. Through Sebastian’s instruction, I learned how the use of body in performance art is an act of defiance, an act of reclaiming something that society often uses against you.”
--Francesca Varga

“Through participating in this workshop I learned a lot more about my body and its boundaries but also made me more aware in many ways of how I use body language everyday and how people might interpret it.”
--Nicole Abrams

“Performing my own feminist art taught me about how to take actions that are seemingly meaningless and give them a meaning.”
--Evan Auburn

“Sebastián did a wonderful job with giving each of us little tools to resist in our daily lives, and I have already begun to be resistant with my body.”
--Nicole Case

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