For Chile (1/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
Elías Adasme (Illapel, Chile 1955) is a multimedia visual artist, graphic designer, art teacher and essayist of contemporary art, who has lived in exile in Puerto Rico since 1983.
His body of work explores a variety of conceptual work such as installations, performances, digital graphics, visual poetry and mail art. An ideology of social justice constitutes the thematic topic of all of his work; erecting signs that struggle to establish spaces for free expression, in a kind of détente to ignorance and alienation.
He belongs to the group of artists that the writer Nelly Richard called “Escena de Avanzada”, artists who were characterized by developing strategies of artistic activism and counter-narratives materialized through performance and intervention in public space.
For Chile (2/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
The series A Chile, Art Actions 1979 - 1980, a polyptych consisting of five panels that record actions –corporal interventions– carried out in private and public spaces in Santiago, Chile, is Elías Adasme’s most representative work. These works were produced in the midst of the brutal dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet, who seized power from the democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973, and ruled Chile until 1990.
For Chile (1/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
In the first photographic panel, entitled Corporal Intervention in a Private Space the artist recorded the moment in which he hung himself in his house. It is no longer him, but rather a reference to the social body, the geographical “body” of Chile.
For Chile (2/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
In the second image, Adasme hangs upside down in public, at considerable risk to his wellbeing and liberty. After a series of failed attempts outside other metro stations in Santiago –aborted because suspicious people were present– he chose Salvador Metro on Dec 1979.
The artist selected the site because the word Salvador gives the viewer a multiplicity of readings, as an allusion to redemption, to rescue, and also as a tribute to the figure of Salvador Allende.
For Chile (3/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
In the third panel, we see Adasme, now with the image of the map of Chile projected on his bare skin, incorporating and containing the national territory.
For the artist, the naked body can be read as a violated, tortured and abused body, a metaphor for the country; a product of the dictatorship.
For Chile (4/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
In the fourth image, the artist once again stands next to a map of Chile, though he has crossed out the name of the country from it and instead written the word on his chest.
This is meant to convey a hopeful message, that the country will get back on its feet and get out of its current state. Transferring the country’s name from an inanimate object to his living body is a powerful statement on who and what makes up a nation.
For Chile (5/5) (2011) by Elías AdasmeMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
A fifth component of the piece actually documents when, where and for how long these four photographs were shown in public spaces, capturing the artist in the process of setting up the reproductions, and several passersby looking on and taking in the work.
This body of work was exhibited at the Paris Biennale in 1982, but never in his own country, as the artist fled in exile to Puerto Rico in 1983 following several arrests and death threats from the Pinochet regime.
