LMBL icon

The exhibition LMBL icon comes to GAM to propose a deep and critical journey towards the origin of the images that defined an era in Chilean culture. Unlike a traditional retrospective on political action or the body, this exhibition focuses on photography as a device of symbolic construction, exploring the more than 30-year relationship between Pedro Lemebel and the photographer Pedro Marinello.

Through his lens, Marinello's personal archive reveals how images were co-created that today inhabit prestigious international museums such as the MoMA and the Reina Sofía, but that are presented here to question who is the true author of our visual memory. The tour invites the public to travel through a space where the icon becomes collective and authorship becomes unstable.

The curatorship, by Andrea Paz Serrano, adds to a critical reading on authorship in the construction of cultural icons, which does not seek to fix answers, but rather to open questions about ownership, memory and visual appropriation in Chile, to finally confirm the iconography through this process and cultural appropriation of images.

With a selection of 20 works that include individual photographs and emblematic series such as Las dos Fridas de las Yeguas del Apocalipsis, the exhibition expands towards the present through technological intervention. Guest artists Tevo Díaz and Cristián Canto use artificial intelligence tools and video installations to fragment and rearticulate the original frames, summoning presences that insist on appearing in the current time and transforming the room into an immersive experience on a human scale.

"This exhibition articulates research, production and mediation around a central question: who is the author of the photograph/work? Does he construct the icon? From different disciplines, the collective work of the team of this exhibition seeks to highlight the political dimension of the image and its impact on cultural memory," comments the curator.

Designed as a reading device rather than simple contemplation, the exhibition seeks to activate dialogue with diverse communities, from young people and students to the LGBTIQ+ community, appealing to Lemebel's legacy of dissidence. The experience is completed with a Photo Spot, a space for active mediation where visitors can intervene and interpret the iconic images, putting their own body in the work to reflect on how an image stops belonging to one and becomes everyone's.

Photographs Pedro Marinello Kairath | Curation, Management and Production Andrea Paz Serrano | MuseographyTrinidad Moreno | Media artists Tevo Díaz, Cristián Canto | Acknowledgments Joanna Reposi, Natalia Geisse and Pablo De La Fuente.

Project Financed by the National Fund for Cultural Development and the Arts, National Financing Area, Call 2025.