STUTTGART.- Volcanos are powerful natural forces that play a significant role in the geological and climatic formation of our planet. They do not just stand for destruction, but also for the creation of new land and living environments, and they are also a metaphor for cycles of birth, destruction, and rejuvenation. For these reasons, in many cultures they have strong symbolic meanings.
The exhibition (Re)Born from Volcanos, at ifa Gallery Stuttgart from 15 November 2024 to 23 February 2025, is devoted to the transformative power of volcanos and the cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions that are linked with volcanic cycles. This project invites us to view the world beyond the realm of geopolitics and instead via the cartography of volcanic connections. It addresses forms of knowledge that arise in conjunction with the world’s largest belt of volcanos, the Ring of Fire, which connects regions, forms of life, and memories from Abya Yala / America to Asia.
(Re)Born from Volcanos presents video and sound works, ceramics, photographs, textiles, silverwork, a wall painting, and performances. The project explores questions and themes like: What does it mean to live on a dynamic planet Earth that is subject to constant change? What insights can we gain from the shared experience and forms of knowledge of our world community?
Artists: Esvin Alarcón Lam, Seba Calfuqueo, Raven Chacon, Santos Chávez, Mena Guerrero, Lisa Hilli, Saul Kak & Charles Fairbanks, Luis Ortiz, Gabriel Rossell Santillán, Arte a 360 grados (Maurilio Sánchez Flores, José Luis Romero Chino, Emmanuel Tepal Calvario), Neyen Pailamilla, Monai de Paula Antunes & Silvia Noronha, Antonio Paucar, Tita Salinas & Irwan Ahmett, Citra Sasmita
The exhibition is curated by Paz Guevara and Cristian Vargas Paillahueque, in conversation with Bettina Korintenberg and Gabriel Rossell Santillán, in the context of the one-year programme Agua Quemada (Burnt Water) at ifa Gallery Stuttgart.
(Re)Born from Volcanos - Artistic Positions
The Mapuche in Chile and Argentina see volcanos as tutelary spirits and the guardians of their culture. Seba Calfuqueo links the human body and mountains in her work, and she has made a series of pillan* silver jewellery that refers to exhibits in an ethnological museum in Germany – which she thus wishes to liberate from colonial museum practice. (*Pillan is a Mapuche word for volcano.)
In his woodcuts, Santos Chávez, who fled Chile’s dictatorship for East Berlin in 1981, captures one of the cosmovisions of the Mapuche and the memory of an aesthetic idiom shaped by volcanic lands. In the Mapuche imagination all the elements of life are seen as of equal value.
Monai de Paula Antunes and Silvia Noronha extend their participatory and collaborative practice with a ceramics studio for children as part of this exhibition, referring there to the creation of material, soil, and fire. Antonio Paucar’s performance and video both work with the body and the use of medicinal plants, while Raven Chacon creates an audio-visual work for four singers, who sing about the irregular horizon line of the volcanic crater in the Jemez mountains.
Esvin Alarcón Lam’s performance connects the history of migration from China with Abya Yala / America, and in particular Guatemala. The collaborative textile and photo works by Gabriel Rossell Santillán, Luis Ortiz, and the Nahuatl Art Collective Arte a 360 grados / Tequiocalco address the extraction of natural resources in volcanic regions, thereby becoming a symbol of resistance. Citra Sasmita brings a poem by the nineteenth-century Balinese Queen I Dewa Agung Istri Kanya to new life in the royal palace of the Karangasem kingdom, linking personal memories with a political call to action.
Lisa Hilli’s photo series documents practices of body ornamentation, which she reproduces in order to activate the matrilinear identity and the complex relationships to land, sea, and animals, and also to Rakaia, the spirit of the volcanos in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The documentary film by Saúl Kak and Charles Fairbanks about the eruption of Chichonal in Chiapas, Mexico, explores cyclical processes of catastrophe and renewal.
Mena Guerrero’s wall painting establishes a connection to the subterranean forces and the magma of a volcano, a process that can both create and destroy, while also being a female force that offers ways of belonging. Neyen Pailamilla conducts a dialogue with the landscape of Rukapillan in southern Chile, and also narrates an erotic dream with associations to desire, water, sound, and the richness of the forest, addressing the fruitful visual cycle of volcanic forces and exploring the overwhelming green of these landscapes. Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett present part of their decades-long interventions in which they have been exploring vulnerability, humanity, and politics in the trans-Pacific space of the Ring of Fire.
Agua Quemada – ifa Gallery Stuttgart Annual Programme
This exhibition is the second part of the ifa Gallery Stuttgart one-year programme Agua Quemada (Burnt Water), which, from June 2024 to July 2025, addresses themes such as diasporic movements, memory, resistance, regeneration, and community, as well as ancestral technologies and forms of knowledge. Agua Quemada is created in collaboration with the six curators Merv Espina, Oulimata Gueye, Paz Guevara, Bettina Korintenberg, Mauricio Marcín, and Gabriel Rossell Santillán.
