NOME is pleased to announce Voluspa Jarpa’s exhibition Syndemic Studies, curated by Tiago de Abreu Pinto. Syndemic Studies is the study-phase of the project SINDEMIA, with which Jarpa won the inaugural Julius Baer Art Prize for Latin American Female Artists, in collaboration with the Modern Art Museum in Bogota – MAMBO (2021).
The term syndemic was introduced in the 1990s in the field of medical anthropology to describe the synergistic nature of disease, namely how a disease interacts with other illnesses. In Syndemic Studies Jarpa diagnoses the multiple, intertwined maladies currently affecting her native Chile. Between October 2019 and June 2020, Chile’s citizens witnessed one crisis after another. A social revolt spread through the streets of the country’s cities that was sparked by a raise in subway fares but quickly extended to encompass broader issues related to economic and social inequality.
Deemed a “social outbreak,” a term typically applied to the spread of illness, the gatherings that ensued in public space produced new constellations of what theorist Ariella Azoulay calls “the civil language of revolution.” Consisting of sets of gestures, movements, signs, sounds, and images that both transcend and undermine contemporary geopolitical borders, this language can be spoken by anyone, “but never alone, its statements are made of many and by the many.” Voluspa Jarpa draws upon the visual vocabulary from this social shock to create a series of new works that explore the languages of power and resistance. The pellets used to purposefully blind demonstrators and the lasers used by protestors to confound the police appear in different formations in a series of “studies,” including a laser installation, a “floating” sculpture comprised of metal pellets, and prints of bullet ridden trees.
With the support of:
Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes, convocatoria 2021- Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio de Chile
Dirección de Asuntos Culturales del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Chile
Stiftung Kunstfonds and NEUSTART KULTUR-Programm, Germany
