Kolectivo de Restauración Territorial 
Residency:
September 8 – September 20, 2017

Kolectivo de Restauración Territorial is comprised of artists Gonzalo Cueto Vera, Jorge A. Olave Riveros, and Cristian Wenuvil Peiñan. During their residency at 18th Street Arts Center, they will be working with researcher Paulina Varas on the project Interzona for the exhibition Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy and Activism in the Americas presented at Otis College of Art and Design (September 17—December 10, 2017) as part of Getty-led PST: LA/LA. They will also be in dialogue with artist Alfadir Luna and researcher David Gutiérrez Castañeda.

Jorge A. Olave Riveros is a sound and visual artist born in Temuco, Chile. His work with sound is situated in aesthetic cartography and is principally centered in orality and the memory of Wallmapu (the Mapuche territory located in the Southern Cone of America stretching from the Limarí River in the north to the Chilean archipelago in the south, from the shore of the Pacific Ocean through Patagonia). He has created compilations around the songs and mythologies of the Mapuche, soundscapes, and various exhibition experiences and interventions around the intercultural relationship between eye and ear. In his recent work, he employs sound in order to refer to the border, territoriality, and anti-colonialism. He has studied the sciences, visual anthropology, and electroacoustic composition.

Gonzalo Cueto Vera is an artist born and based in Temuco, Chile. His approach to his artistic practice and research stems from observations of his expanded local context. Situating his work at the intersection of video essay and field work, he prefers to move between spaces that are open and rural to those suppressed by the subjectivity of the neoliberal discourse of development and extractive violence. He positions his artistic practice as a tool for reflection on local realities in crisis, as the contemporary place for critical reflection and creation, and between the edges of progress and dystopia.

He has developed residences in Peru, Argentina, and Ecuador. Vera has also participated in festivals and exhibitions of video art in Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Norway, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Peru, Ecuador, Germany, and Chile. He received his degree in Fine Arts from the University of Chile in Temuco and a Master’s degree in Theory and Practice of Contemporary Plastic Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2007.

Cristian Wenuvil Peiñan is a sound professional, artist and experimental musician from Temuco, Chile. His work seeks to recognize and promote intercultural spaces and alternative social networks on basis of the arts and cultures of small towns and villages.

Cueto has organized events related to the dialogue of Mapuche music, the appreciation of orality, and the expansion of experimental sounds, words, and life in Wallmapu. He received Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Catholic University. His studies included workshops and courses in different artistic disciplines.

Paulina Varas is a researcher and independent curator. She is a member of CRAC Valparaíso, a collaborative non-profit research platform that works in the city of Valparaíso. With artist residencies, research action, critical pedagogies, and radical architecture, CRAC proposes a critical entanglement with the public sphere, the city, and the territory as a network of connections and associations of social experiments. Varas has participated in projects of archive reactivation: CADA (Colectivo Acciones De Arte), Guillermo Deisler, and Luz Donoso. She has authored or co-authored the following books: Muntadas en Latinoamérica (Caldas, 2009), Revisión/Remisión de la historiografía de las artes visuales chilenas contemporáneas (Santiago de Chile, 2011), and “Guillermo Deisler. Archivo, textos e imágenes en acción” (Santiago de Chile, 2013). Since 2007, she has been a member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur where she has participated in a number of publications, public presentations, support operations, and working groups in Chile, Spain, Argentina, and Peru among others.

Amongst her curatorial projects, she has notably curated or co-curated Cierto tipo de poética política (Valparaíso, 2008), Subversive Practices. Art Under Conditions of Political Repression, 60s-80s South America-Europe (Stuttgart, 2009), Valparaíso: Intervenciones (Valparaíso, 2010), Una acción hecha por otro es una obra de la Luz Donoso (Santiago, 2011), Artist for Democracy: el archivo de Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago, 2014), and Poner el cuerpo. Llamamientos de arte y política en los años ochenta en América Latina (Santiago, 2016). Varas received her Bachelor of Arts from the Universidad de Playa Ancha and holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Art from the Universidad de Barcelona.

Alfadir Luna is an artist whose work primarily takes the form of drawing and action art; it begins as reflections revolving around knowledge processes, which usually culminate in site-specific interventions. Since 2006 he has developed his work within the framework of the social structures that constitute public markets in Spanish-speaking contexts, and since 2013 in sites of migrant crossing. Since 2013 he is a member of the “Teatro Línea de Sombra” (Shadow Line Theater) company, where he is managing the “Ruta Migrante” (Migrant Route) project.

His work has also been shown in different public platforms both in Mexico and abroad. The exhibition Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas will feature his work Procesión del Señor de Maíz, a result of his collaborative 10-year project with the merchants of the La Merced Market in Mexico City and his dialogue with local merchants in Santa Ana, CA. Luna graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (2008) and studied aesthetics, art and violence at the Colegio de Saberes (2010-2011). He is currently completing a Master’s degree in Art and Environment at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He also teaches at the “Fábrica de Artes y Oficios” (Oriente) (Factory of Arts and Trades (East)) in Mexico City, one of four cultural centers and training facilities supported by the city government, and in the certificate program “Transversales” of the same facility.

David Gutiérrez Castañeda is a curator, advisor, and author of several articles on contemporary art practices and social processes in Latin America. His current research concerns performance studies. Past research projects include: Looking Beyond, Going In: Arts and social interests in Colombia (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2006), Gathering: Cultural Processes and Movements for Self-Affirmation (Universidad Panamericana, 2007-2008), Contemporary Art Practices as Source for Significant Learning (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, 2008), Mapa Teatro 1987-1992 (UNAM, 2009-2012), and Care Exercises. Concerning ‘La Piel de la Memoria’ (1996-2011) (UNAM, 2012-2016). He also is a member of the research group Workshop Critical History of Art (since 2006) and the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (since 2008).

Castañeda received the Colegio Mexiquense Scholarship from the Ford Foundation under the program Lay Liberties in order to investigate secular art and politics at the Colegio de México (2006). He was awarded the National Prize for Art Criticism from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia in 2010. He received his degree in sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2006), Master’s in History of Art at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) with a focus on contemporary art (2011), and a Ph.D. in Art History at the same institution. He is a full-time Research Professor at the National School of Higher Education (ENES) at the Morelia Campus, UNAM. He was a professor at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional in Colombia (2008-2009), a research professor at the Universidad Panamericana (2007-2008), a researcher in Museology and Heritage Management at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2006-2009), and a teacher at the Mexican Academy of Dance (2013).