The New MoMA

摘要

For several years now, we have been living both in South and North America. To chronicle our own experience, we made a painting about the journey. The painting is rather schematic: with three discrete but related elements, it represents the geometrical abstraction of the continental geography that has become deeply rooted in our minds. The top figure is depicted as a square, and the bottom one as an equilateral triangle with its rectangular side aligned with the upper square. Thus, the east side of the north (which depicts New York) is aligned with the west side of the south (which shows Santiago). The three variations are even more reductive: the central piece illustrates both of the other figures at the same size.We would like to read America as a myth that grows or shrinks according to our circumstances, our desires, our fears, our references, conventions, and memories. America is an invisible counterweight. Deliberately polemic, "This Is Not America" was a political statement on a prominent Times Square billboard by Chilean conceptual artist Alfredo Jaar. The strength of the message did not lie in its explicit denial but in its lack of a definite answer: if not America, then what? Traditional manners aside, irony is deeply rooted in our Chilean culture. If a Chilean says, "the wine is good," it could mean that the wine was really tasty or it could mean that the wine was rather dreadful.