Walking between heaven and earth

In Chile today, 9 indigenous peoples are officially recognized, among them 6 languages ​​remain in force in different degrees of use and reproduction. Behind this record lies another, in an expressive silence; that of silenced and forgotten languages, although persistent in the memory and hidden in different memory registers.

The proposed axis collects its main content from the current transversal indigenous discourse, which in cultural terms claims the urgent need to revitalize its own sociolinguistic systems. The conservation and reproduction of traditional languages ​​are thus diagnosed by the people themselves in a state of reproduction crisis, both in the transmission of traditional cultural practices and expressions of indigenous peoples, and in the impact of this cultural element on traditional and contemporary sociocultural and artistic manifestations and supports.

The articulating concept “walking between heaven and earth” is based on the notion that indigenous cultures name their entire environment and give it meaning through their movements, their walks, navigations and transfers through their own territory and also through that of others, either in active observation, as well as in the cloudy memory of dispossessions, displacements and diasporas that charge with historicity that space “earth”, seen as a cultural territory. In this way, the landscape, its textures, topographies, hills, lakes, canals, promontories, valleys and various features, is named and meaning from the languages ​​of each culture.

The “sky” territory, on the other hand, is assumed to be a kind of significant extension of the terrestrial cultural habitat. Thus, for the different indigenous cultures, the firmament is symbolically “another land.” The indigenous cultures in Chile, due to their geographical location, metaphorically and really see the same sky. In this way stars, stars and constellations are also manifested from cultural systems. There is the compass that guides the paths, the sign that markets omens and also the home of the ancient spirits.

The idea here is to locate this sky as a transit, a walk, a sail. That is, taking the verb walk from the deep cultural meanings it contains; walking or navigating as knowing or recognizing the space, naming it, transmitting it, resignifying it, identifying/being in it.

Walking, sailing, traveling are founding axes in the different indigenous cultural systems. The earth and the sky. Hence, both concepts have two differentiated spaces but at the same time united in this meeting. - José Ancan Jara

The invited artists and their works will be located on earth and sky. Some of the creators present in this space are:

Cristian Rapu Edmunts, Rapa Nui people - photography Julio Hotus Salinas, Rapa Nui people – Polynesian canoe builder Sebastian Calfuqueo Aliste, Mapuche people - audiovisual Paola Rapiman Risco, Mapuche people - textile sculpture Violeta Lorena Lemungier Quezada, Mapuche people - textile Lienlaf, Mapuche people – sound video
Felipe Rivera Marín, Chango people – raft builder
Juan Huarancca Ancho, Quechua people (Peru) – Painting, sculpture and mixed media
Martiniano Nahuelhual Nahuelhual, Mapuche people – wampo canoe builder

This space will also have poetic declamations, by the following exponents of indigenous poetry. They are:

David Añiñir Guilitraro
Maria Isabel Lara Millapán
Erwin Quintupil
María Teresa Panchillo
Roxana Miranda Rupailaf