A suspended structure, built with tracks intended for industrial slaughtering plants, is a direct reference to the theme of the intensive exploitation of the environmental heritage, and is designed as a continuous circuit within the exhibition space
"The exhibition at AR/GE kunst is the first exhibition phase that follows the in-depth research process of the artist in Patagonia, for years at the center of the struggles, claims and recoveries of the Mapuche people. Silver Rights focuses on the ancestral link of communities with the land (mapu) that has been worn down and denied by colonizing forces, which have changed over the centuries to gradually establish themselves in recent decades through practices of a clear neo-extractivist matrix. […] The core of the exhibition is made up of a series of silver jewels worked by Mauro Millán himself and designed together with Elena Mazzi following a series of workshops on new symbols and current struggles, held with numerous members of the community. "The retrafe (the silversmith) helps to unite the collective dimension with the individual one, with the ultimate aim of nourishing the collective" Millán writes in his contribution to the book that accompanies the project, and continues: "Mapuche silverware is the synthesis of all collective needs and the tangible expression of a long and permanent conversation between the ancestors and the living of the Mapu ”. [...] The jewels are anticipated in the exhibition path by an installation created by Elena Mazzi and Eduardo Molinari in which a precise composition of drawings and images on paper and fabric are accompanied by an audio path in four episodes."
"SILVER RIGHTS focuses on the ancestral bond between the communities and the land (mapu), a bond eroded and denied by colonising forces that have mutated over the centuries to gradually establish themselves in recent decades through neo-extractivist practices; a settlement process resulting from the convergence of investment policies and commercial agreements between South American governments and foreign multinationals" including the Italian Benetton. More specifically, the work respond to the narrative proposed by the Leleque Museum, an anthropological museum opened in 2000 in the very lands owned by Benetton; an ambiguous operation that dismisses the Mapuche people as an extinct culture rather than one that is alive and active in the disputed territory, ‘musealising’ their memory and material culture." Elena Mazzi
The idea for the installation project curated by Studio GISTO was born from a continuous dialogue with the artist and from the need to define an infrastructure that could relate objects of various kinds (prints of different formats and materials, audio speakers, artisanal silverware), uniting them within a narrative path.
Elena Mazzi addresses this complexity by engaging in dialogue, supporting and expanding the dense network of relations that the Mapuche community has been consciously weaving for years; a way of understanding the art of diplomacy that, on the one hand, implies building and maintaining international relations between different political and cultural subjects, and, on the other, is implemented in their cosmovisions as a form of radical mediation between land, human and ‘more than human’ beings.
The project is accompanied by a publication published by Archive Books.
The suspended structure, built with tracks intended for industrial slaughtering plants, is a direct reference to the theme of the intensive exploitation of the environmental heritage, and is designed as a continuous circuit within the exhibition space. The supports for the objects on display are made in 3D printing. The colors chosen for the various elements of the installation reflect the shades of the Mapuche flag.
The structure was designed as a system that can be easily dismantled and adapted to the different exhibition contexts that will host the exhibition: AR/GE kunst (Bolzano), Södertälje Konsthall (Södertälje, Sweden), Castello di Rivoli (Turin).
The project is supported by Italian Council, Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea,VII edition, 2019
In this final selection of photos, some detail photos of the core of the exhibition: a series of silver jewels worked by Mauro Millán himself and designed together with Elena Mazzi following a series of workshops on new symbols and current struggles, held with numerous members of the community.
Elena Mazzi
Emanuele Guidi
Alessandro Mason
Stefano Riba
Erik Raffaini
Tiberio Sorvillo