Concha en ácido
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, MAC, Santiago de Chile, 2024.
Curated by Sergio Soto Maulén.
Colonia, Discarded mussel shells.
Electronically controlled water
recirculation and atomization
system, 2024.
Installation view. Documentation by Felipe Ugalde.
Pancore table, CNC carved wood with surface covered by scallops, abalones and mussels shells mosaic, fixed with a compound made of pulverized shells and agglutinant, painted glass.
Pancore table, CNC carved wood with surface covered by scallops, abalones and mussels shells mosaic, fixed with a compound made of pulverized shells and agglutinant, painted glass.
Colonia, Discarded mussel shells.
Electronically controlled water
recirculation and atomization
system, 2024.
Pancore fragment #1, CNC carved wood with surface covered by scallops, abalones and mussels shells mosaic, fixed with a compound made of pulverized shells and agglutinant, painted glass.
Pancore central fragment, shell mosaic over carved wood and glass—The surface treatment primarily features scallop shells sourced from landfills in northern Chile, particularly in Tongoy, where the culture of this particular mollusk sustains the town local ́s economy. In the open sea, scallops are de-shelled, and the discarded shells often accumulate on roadsides with trash of diverse origins, forming contemporary middens.
Concha en ácido. Steel, heat oxides and patinas, magnetic dust, blown glass.
Vistas. Stained glass in-lay in museum wall, viewers cutted in the shape of mussels shells.
Pancore (pata pinza). Steel, heat oxides
and patinas, haze.
Concha en ácido , installation view. Embedded abalone shells, lighting system, steel, blown glass, CNC carved wood with crushed shell ́s surface.
Pancore (fragmento concha) . Steel, CNC carved
wood with surface covered by scallops,
abalones and mussels shells mosaic fixed with a
compound made of pulverized shells and agglutinant, pigments, painted glass, lead, metallic
debris.
Pancore (fragmento concha) . Steel, CNC carved wood with surface covered by scallops, abalones and mussels shells mosaic fixed with a compound made of pulverized shells and agglutinant, pigments, painted glass, lead, metallic debris.
Tulipa. Steel, blown glass, lead,
lighting system.
Conchal (misturas). Abalone
shells in-lay over museum plinth, lighting system
Conchal (misturas). Abalone
shells in-lay over museum plinth, lighting system
Pancore (pata
punta roma). Steel, heat oxides and
patinas, magnetic dust and stained
glass.
Pancore (pata
punta roma). Steel, heat oxides and
patinas, magnetic dust and stained
glass.
Concha en ácido
Contemporary Art Museum Santiago, Chile.
from April 4th to September 8th, 2024.
Contemporary Art Museum Santiago, Chile.
from April 4th to September 8th, 2024.
“Concha en Ácido” intervenes four rooms at the Museum of Contemporary
Art of Santiago, tracing a path that follows the dissolution of materialities
and logical paradigms of the present. Unfolding a narrative alongside
images, surfaces, sculptures, and interventions that delve beyond the
visible and the human domain, the exbhition invites us to consider our
material interactions with bodies that exceed our own and, based on that
experience, to imagine other scenarios, diluting our notions of perspective
and human scale.
The exhibition, named after the essay “Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves” by environmental humanities scholar Stacy Alaimo, proposes a material turn to consider the marine shells and carapaces that are currently suffering from disintegration due to atmospheric pollution and ocean acidification. Like our bodies or the neoclassical building that houses the museum itself, these shelters and their porosity are affected by the dissolution of hegemonic narratives and the political, social, emotional and environmental crises of our times. “Concha en Ácido” challenges our own corporality and way of inhabiting, searching for the dissolution of our protective layers, limits, and shelled individuality, to find new shelters that allow us to transform and coexist more attentively, drifting us into scenarios for material imagination.
Through this drift, we are lured to engage with alternative realities where terrestrial, aqueous, natural, and industrial boundaries blur into rare ensembles. In a call to reconsider our role as mere observers, the exhibition invites us to actively engage with the materials and narratives that affect us, becoming co-creators of a world where imagination and materiality intertwine. This immersion into the realms of material imagination offers a glimpse into a future where our understanding of self, environment, and existence is shaped not by rigid constructs but by the fluid exchange of collective visualizations.
The exhibition, named after the essay “Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves” by environmental humanities scholar Stacy Alaimo, proposes a material turn to consider the marine shells and carapaces that are currently suffering from disintegration due to atmospheric pollution and ocean acidification. Like our bodies or the neoclassical building that houses the museum itself, these shelters and their porosity are affected by the dissolution of hegemonic narratives and the political, social, emotional and environmental crises of our times. “Concha en Ácido” challenges our own corporality and way of inhabiting, searching for the dissolution of our protective layers, limits, and shelled individuality, to find new shelters that allow us to transform and coexist more attentively, drifting us into scenarios for material imagination.
Through this drift, we are lured to engage with alternative realities where terrestrial, aqueous, natural, and industrial boundaries blur into rare ensembles. In a call to reconsider our role as mere observers, the exhibition invites us to actively engage with the materials and narratives that affect us, becoming co-creators of a world where imagination and materiality intertwine. This immersion into the realms of material imagination offers a glimpse into a future where our understanding of self, environment, and existence is shaped not by rigid constructs but by the fluid exchange of collective visualizations.
︎ As part of the exhibition program was held the conversation “De Your Shell on Acid a Concha en ácido” with feminist philosopher Stacy Alaimo. Part of the activity can be revisited here.
Project supported by FONDART Artes Visuales | CNC Fabrication: Labomat, Department of Architecture, Federico Santa María Technical University.
Curator: Sergio Soto Maulén | Architect: Ignacio Lira Montes | Lighting Design: Pascual Mena Rodríguez | Illustrations: Simón Jarpa
Architecture Assistant: Javiera Paz Pino Gallardo | Production: Tarix Sepúlveda, Francisca Geisse - Curatorial Assistant: María Errázuriz Subercaseaux
Electronic Development and Programming: Taller Dinamo – Gustavo Muñoz | Installation: Víctor Flores, Adolfo Bimer | Interns: Catalina Martínez, Paz Ponce Andrade, Carolina Tavolari Holzhauer, Emilia Astorga Calcagno, Amanda Romero Gili.
︎Artishock–Javier Gonzáles-Pesce ; ︎Relieve Contemporáneo –Sergio Soto Maulén ; ︎Daily Lazy
Curator: Sergio Soto Maulén | Architect: Ignacio Lira Montes | Lighting Design: Pascual Mena Rodríguez | Illustrations: Simón Jarpa
Architecture Assistant: Javiera Paz Pino Gallardo | Production: Tarix Sepúlveda, Francisca Geisse - Curatorial Assistant: María Errázuriz Subercaseaux
Electronic Development and Programming: Taller Dinamo – Gustavo Muñoz | Installation: Víctor Flores, Adolfo Bimer | Interns: Catalina Martínez, Paz Ponce Andrade, Carolina Tavolari Holzhauer, Emilia Astorga Calcagno, Amanda Romero Gili.
︎Artishock–Javier Gonzáles-Pesce ; ︎Relieve Contemporáneo –Sergio Soto Maulén ; ︎Daily Lazy
Mollusca: Poesía de Caracolas
Casa Central Universidad de Chile.
Sala Museo Gabriela Mistral, Santiago, Chile, 2024.
Museographic and curatorial commision.
Mollusca: poesía de caracolas
Casa Central Universidad de Chile. Sala Museo Gabriela Mistral.
Universidad de Chile inaugurates an art exhibition that revisits the collection of Pablo Neruda, displaying thousands of seashells belonging to his collection. As part of a joint effort between the Andrés Bello Central Archive and the Vice Rectory of Extension and Communications of the University of Chile (VEXCOM), this new exhibition is designed under the concept and design of visual artist Elizabeth Burmann Littin.
Regarding this, the national sculptor “emphasizes the importance of directing our gaze towards these creatures, as they are the second largest group within the animal kingdom and catalysts for the various climate effects that have occurred throughout eras due to the impact of human and industrial activity on the marine ecosystem.” In this sense, the exhibition becomes an opportunity t reflect on the collection of natural species, and for the public to appreciate this set from a perspective that values biodiversity and the importance of mollusks.
In the same vein, visual artist Elizabeth Burmann pointed out at the inauguration event that in the current context of human detachment from nature, it is of “vital importance to immerse our gaze into the ocean and pay attention to the creatures that inhabited the thousands of empty seashells in this collection,” as - although they may seem distant - “these slimy creatures are surprisingly familiar to our own origin and the various forms of life on the planet. Those of us present here carry in our genetics an oceanic origin,” because “the plasma of our blood shares the chemistry and salinity levels of ancient seas. In other words, we carry an ocean within.”
Through this extraordinary collection, the exhibition allows visitors to travel through the seven seas with species ranging from the most common to those that stand out due to the rarity of their species, genres, classes, sizes, and colors. Through various artistic, visual, and sound elements, the exhibition invites the public to reflect on the collection of biological species, alongside the aesthetic and ecological dimensions that connect us to oceanic diversity.
Pupila
Two Seven Two Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 2023.
Curated by Yasmin Nurming-Por.
Pupila, installation view . Steel structures, mussels shells, abalone shells, stained glass, blown and fusioned glass, silicone.
misty-eyed. Steel, mussel shells viewers, glass, lead, water.
Alga mala (naranja encapsulada), Stained glass piece with encapsulated orange, plastic residues.
This material assemblage pays attention to details emerging from today's material and environmental excesses. Combining the craft of stained glass with decomposing materials and residues from the studio artistic practice, the piece grows around an orange, encapsulated between the glasses; however, its remains have been almost completely evaporated by the greenhouse effect produced.
Pupila, installation view. Mussel shells and glass o ver st eel structure, oxy-cut custom vent piece and blown glass apliqué.
Pupila. Steel, fused
glass, water.
Beso vegetal. Steel, heat oxides and
patinas, magnetic dust, rubber and
stained glass.
Cyano-chain. Glass, lead and debris
Stained glass piece inspired by the microscopical study of microorganisms present in samples of fresh bodies of water. The chain resembles the mingle of Cyanobacterial communities, first photosynthetic organisms on earth, that by capturing light and expelling oxygen, created the primordial atmosphere that we breathe today.
Pupila
Two seven Two Gallery, Toronto.
november 25th until december 16th 2023
Two seven Two Gallery, Toronto.
november 25th until december 16th 2023
Pupila opens with an invitation to gaze through a pair of watery mollusc eyes. Borrowing the form of a tower viewer—fixed binoculars common in tourist destinations—her invertebrate glasses act as an intermediary between the outside world and the artist’s practice of worldmaking. Bringing together references from feminist science- fiction and decorative allusions to Art Nouveau the artist constructs an industrial aqueous landscape where ancient stalagmites, Jurassic shells and gelatinous beings co-exist.
With a strong knowledge of craft-based methods, Burmann Littin is a disobedient student. The central sculpture beso vegetal (2023) at once resembles a fragmented oyster shell and the bisection of a limb, anthropomorphized using rubber and stained glass. Like a beckoning call from a distant room, her seductive works ask you to meet them on the level of the floor, the ceiling and the wall. Combining organic materials sourced across Chile, Rhode Island and Ontario with steel manufactured in Hamilton, she muddies the separation between humans and nature. As the artist shares “everything is a beast in the wrong environment,” here beast and beauty are open to interpretation.
Contrasting the cold materiality of steel, an atmospheric pink light evokes the warmth of a perpetual sunset with the potential of a sunrise, or a dawn beckoning an unknown time. Recalling the triviality of human time to earthly—and more than earthly—time, her reconfigurations of creaturely life perform a slippery, anachronistic dance like an eyelid flickering over a pupila (pupil).
—Curatorial text by Yasmin Nurming-Por
mareas
Galería Patricia Ready
Santiago, Chile, 2023.
Galería Patricia Ready
Santiago, Chile, 2023.
sketch for mareas by Simon Jarpa.
Biombo climático. Steel, stained
glass, abalone shells.
Detrito i. Steel, gamba remains, lure, moretti glass, borosilicate glass, lead, silicone, led.
Fragata vanidosa. Fused glass,
murano glass, mirror, lead, residues.
Mollusca. Steel, blown and fused
glass, water, debris.
Ofiura (baby). Steel, blown glass, calcium carbonate, mesh, biofilms, pigments.
Ofiura (slippery). Steel, blown glass, calcium carbonate, mesh, biofilms, pigments. Ofiuras are a series of sculptures inspired by brittle stars.
This ocean floor dwellers floor posses a unique form of intelligence; despite being eyesless. brainless creatures, they are able to create images through a sensory system that remains mysterious to science. Covered in calcium carbonate nano-lenses, through which they form images with their entire bodies, these invertebrates feed on and synthesize organic matter, transforming the remnants that fall from the surface into new organic forms. By studying their movement, this series of sculptures draws attention to beings that not only carry out processes essential to the ecosystem but also challenge our evolutionary paradigms of knowledge and intelligence.
lunóxida. Steel, blown glass, lighting system.
lunóxida. Steel, blown glass, lighting system
mareas
Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago, Chile, 2023.
The ocean floor is a gigantic cemetery. From bodies to anthropogenic residues of maritime commerce and war, pleasure voyages and distressed migration, almost everything that lives or traverses this vital body of salt water accumulates on its bottom.
Even the floating communities of the pelagic zone, such as jellyfish and algae, contribute to the seabed, which far from static is alive with starfish, coral, sea urchins, crabs and microscopic organisms that feed off the organic residues that constantly pour on them. In their digestive processes, these necrophagic creatures synthesize biomass into energy. Alternatively, they metabolize toxins into nutrients or carbon dioxide, participating in the marine water filtration that produces almost half the planet’s oxygen. Finally, the scavengers of what is ecologically known as the benthic zone, or bottom habitat of the ocean, can discard these remains, which disintegrate and sediment as the tiny and singular grains of sand that make up most of the earth’s mineral geosphere.
“mareas,” ocean currents, conjures this primordial atmosphere, emulating the marine dominions that we cannot control and that, fortunately, we still don’t know well enough to fully wreck. Just like the submarine world’s appearances constantly trick us with corals that look like rocks, anemones that may turn out to be venomous flowers, and jellyfish whose touch can be fatal, “mareas” recreates our esthetic fantasy of the underwater world while it exposes it as such. The artist deconstructs the benthic zone, proposing a disjointed and dizzy (“mareada,” from seasickness) vision of this vast and vital territory. As decorator crabs, which use detritus to camouflage themselves and hide from land and ocean predators, “mareas” playfully points to the regenerative power of the submarine ecosystem.
—’Marine debris’ Exhibition text by Celeste Olalquiaga
︎ documentation images