FRANCISCA BENÍTEZ AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF SPACE AND SOCIETY
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago, Chile, presents Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), the first retrospective exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist, curated by Joselyne Contreras, at its Parque Forestal venue.
The process-based practice of Francisca Benítez (Chile) investigates the relationships between space, politics and language. Fieldwork marks the artist's 50th birthday and brings together several of her most significant works developed over the past two decades. The title alludes both to observation and collection and to working with the land and agricultural labor, reflecting the connection of her artistic practice with her experience and exploration in places such as New York, where she has lived since 1998, and the rural area of Pichingal (Maule Region, Chile), her place of origin and current residence, from where several of her works emerge.
The exhibition questions the relationship between power and the construction of cities. It explores the collective, the ephemeral, the occasional, solidarity, desire, and imagination as essential elements for making and, at the same time, contesting the city. The underlying critical question is what the capitalist system implies for life and what idea of city and citizenship it generates. The artist explores these questions through rubbings, public space actions, installations, and collective and community projects.
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View of Francisca Benítez: Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile 2024–2025. © Alvaro Mardones. Courtesy of Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo
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View of Francisca Benítez: Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile 2024–2025. © Alvaro Mardones. Courtesy of Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo
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View of Francisca Benítez: Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile 2024–2025. © Alvaro Mardones. Courtesy of Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo
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View of Francisca Benítez: Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile 2024–2025. © Alvaro Mardones. Courtesy of Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo
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View of Francisca Benítez: Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile 2024–2025. © Alvaro Mardones. Courtesy of Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo
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View of Francisca Benítez: Trabajo de campo (Fieldwork), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile 2024–2025. © Alvaro Mardones. Courtesy of Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo
The exhibition’s curatorship, led by Joselyne Contreras, highlights how Benítez’s body of work is articulated as a material testimony of her commitment to the communities and territories in which she lives and intervenes.
Trabajo de campo is an invitation to imagine new systems of spatial and social organization through an artistic language that crosses disciplinary boundaries and celebrates the possibilities of collective transformation, says the curator.
Some highlights are Property Lines, a collection of graphite rubbings on paper documenting 72 property line floor markings in New York City sidewalks, made during the financial crisis and bank bailout of 2008, and Riego, her most recent body of work in combined media researching the local irrigation practices of her land of origin in the Lontué River basin.
Trabajo de campo will be on display until April 20, 2025 at Parque Forestal venue 506 Ismael Valdés Vergara Av., Santiago (Chile).
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