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Starting on June 6, you will be able to see a mural that 25 Haitian boys and girls created about their life in Chile together with the prominent Chilean illustrators Matías Prado, Tomás Olivos, Daniela William and Sebastián Ilabaca.
The work is called Zanmi, which means friend in Creole, and is the product of workshops held with Haitian children from the communities of Estación Central and directed by the Mar Adentro Foundation in collaboration with the Ignatian University Center of the Alberto Hurtado University.
The illustrators, with extensive experience in participatory methodologies, guided the children's work and composed the mural by projecting their drawings in large format to give them harmony as a whole. It was a complete job, from the small, individual drawings of each child, to the joint creation of a large drawing captured on a roll of paper.
Now the work will be exhibited at GAM in an 8 x 6 meter relief mural that will be installed on the second floor of building B and visible from the central plaza for all visitors.
The work illustrates objects and ideas that identify the child artists and even their own names. This creates a crossroads of cultures full of colors that reveal a Chile enriched by new perspectives thanks to migration.
The role of the illustrators was to compose as a collective. To do this, they had to get rid of their authorial seals, their own styles. They were harmonizing, unifying, always respecting the original drawings.
"As a foundation we are interested in the artistic process in which the integration of migrations is reflected. The children are just forming their identities, their visions are unprejudiced, they transcend territories. In the workshops what we saw was their need to quickly adapt to this new home that is Chile today. That is why their drawings make up a rich iconography of diversity," comments Madeline Hurtado, president of Fundación Mar Adentro.
GAM hosted the Zanmi mural because of its interest in issues of inclusion and participation. “The mural makes visible the cultural change that is taking place in Chile thanks to the wealth that the migrants who arrive in our territory give us,” comments Felipe Mella, executive director of GAM.
For his part, Rubén Morgado, director of the Ignatian University Center comments that "community work enhances creativity because it values the encounter between different ages, lifestyles, between cultures. It is a reason for gratitude and ké kontant (joy in Creole), because the invisible become visible thanks to art."
The work will also have a large reference gigantography in the Universidad Católica subway. Thanks to a dissemination alliance between Metro and GAM, a representation of the work will be seen at the north exit of the station, full of colors and figures.
Both institutions work with migration content that generates greater openness and empathy: “We want our passengers to be inspired by these cultural manifestations that open us to new worlds,” comments Javier Pinto, Executive Director of the MetroArte Cultural Corporation of the Santiago Metro.