Concepción, fragments of modernity

Abstract

This work seeks to reassess the historical memory of our cities through the footprints of local architecture. The project proposes the construction of three-dimensional representative models of case studies, using reliefs and photography for documentation and analysis. Relief, a technique that traditionally “evokes” an idealised allegory of that which is typically Chilean, is here taken from souvenir into the wider field of contemporary art.

The research began with the FONDART project VIEXPO which proposed a symbolic narration from a personal perspective of the history of social housing in our country based on a journey through La Serena, Valparaíso, Talca and Concepción. The work later focused in on Concepción with a record of the facades of the buildings making up the city’s extensive modernist legacy. These photographs generate fragments of the buildings which are then made into reliefs, inviting the public to revisit their city, while making use of the empathic intimacy of the form as a kind of deja-vú.