The term “syndemic” was introduced in the 1990s in anthropological medicine to describe two or more sequential epidemics in a population, which exacerbate the burden of a disease. Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa uses this term as a metaphor to analyze the social protests that occurred between October 2019 and March 2020 in Chile. Sindemia is a multimedia project that includes videos, musical pieces, installations, maps, animations, documents, reports, testimonies, photographs, paintings, and objects. It is the result of a collaborative process involving teams of women artists and intellectuals with diverse backgrounds, both scientific and humanistic. It delves into the sensitive events linked to one of the most intense social upheavals in Chile’s history and highlights the mechanisms of democratic consensus, in tension with authoritarian institutional practices that conceal the ways in which citizen discontent is silenced.
Sindemia was honored at the inaugural Julius Baer Art Prize for Latin American Women Artists, the first award of its kind in Latin America whose mission is to recognize the research of outstanding Latin American women artists. Voluspa Jarpa’s artistic practice focuses on the detailed analysis of declassified archives and official documents that emphasize hidden narratives. Her work explores notions of memory and trauma, with frequent references to the Chilean sociopolitical context and its context within the Latin American context.
Curated by Diana B. Wechsler and Eugenio Viola.