Collaboration with Susan McAllister, Wendy Chadwick and Andrés Honorato 2015-2017
En la Luz is a project based in Chile which addresses the reticence of people to talk about the 1973 coup d’état, and the two competing histories that have arisen as a result of that silence. The project uses the metaphor of light from Star 58 Eridani — which lives 43 light years from Earth and which in 2016 reflected the light it made in 1973 onto Chile — offering a possibility to see 1973 in a new light.
Through a public process individuals were invited to share their memories from this period of time, many of which were documented in video format and then written down on handmade lanterns. This project took shape in the classroom by inviting students to interview their relatives and record their family memories onto paper lanterns which were then shared in the classroom with their peers.
On September 11, 2017 the memory lanterns were brought together in a public art installation at Palacio de La Moneda to create a Constellation of Chilean Memory.
“It is important that the students live this experience… Unfortunately we forget, the memory is fragile. What this project does is recover that memory. It allows students who are very young to know that many of the grandparents in this community, who are especially battered by life, had lived difficult moments. Because they do not know, it is no longer spoken, no longer remembered. A country that remembers, that educates itself, can go ahead.” —Jackeline Silva Pérez, Director of Escuela General Carlos Prats, Santiago, Chile
photos by: Wendy Chadwick, Viviana Galdames Wilson, Naomi Natale
