Magdalena Correa
Suiti

On view March 30-June 4, 2023

HOURS
Tuesday-Sunday 10AM-5PM

LOCATION
OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas
Washington, DC 20006

The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas, the Permanent Mission of Chile to the OAS and the Embassy of Chile in the United States announces Suiti, an exhibition of photography and video work by Chilean multimedia artist Magdalena Correa. Curated by Emilio Navarro, Suiti is made up of a set of photographic and video shots that the artist took in 2017 during her stay in Latvia and her coexistence with the town that lends its name to the project. A mode of Catholic culture, intangible heritage of Humanity, which lives in isolation within a territory with a Lutheran majority.

Continuing along the lines of her previous works, the artist integrates into the communal nucleus of the inhabitants of this culture, and through her lens manages to build a suggestive narrative of an aesthetic nature, often incomplete or interrupted, that seeks to move away from the document. and invite the viewer to add their own disquisitions about the images they see.

In Carlos Jiménéz's "Magdalena Correa: The Endless Journey of Searching for Herself," he writes that she is "an experiential artist, which in this case, refers to the fact that a crucial part of her work is the result of her experiences in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet. The deserts of Atacama in Chile, the Gobi in Mongolia, and La Guajira in Colombia, as well as the Antarctic and the Peruvian Andes, host to the highest gold mine in the world, are some of the destinations chosen by someone who seems to be ruled by the intense desire to search for experiences that are as extreme as possible, both in terms of the natural environment and the human experiences that it shapes."

Correa states that "I am interested in exploring those territories undergoing a situation of isolation, precariousness and oblivion. Places with a form of unstable human life, which also have put up with the harsh conditions imposed by the power of nature. I like pausing and looking at geographical and human isolation and unknown spaces that coexist with our everyday life, but that are beyond our everyday worries since our lives are based on comfort, and so we do not need to be concerned with them as, in many cases, due to their inaccessibility, they simply do not appear on maps."

Magdalena Correa has specialized in photographic and video research projects on isolated and extreme territories inhabited by humans, such as: Austral (2006) about the XI Region of Aysén in the South of Chile; La Desaparición (2008) on the deserts of Gobi in China and Mongolia and the Atacama Desert in the North of Chile; Níveo (2011) about the Chilean village Villa Las Estrellas located in Antarctica; La Rinconada (2013) about the highest gold mine in the world located at 5. 600 metres above sea level in the District of Ananea, Peru; Luxury has a new Address (2014) about the wealth and ostentation of the Kuwaiti society; "Wayúu" (2015) about the Wayúu ethnic group located in the desert of Alta Guajira, Colombia; and, "Suiti" (2019) about the Suiti culture (Alsunga, Latvia), a Unesco intangible heritage on the verge of extinction.

She has held solo exhibitions in numerous institutions and museums, including: Palacio de la Virreina, Barcelona, Spain; Casa Asia, Barcelona, Spain; Fundación Telefónica, Chile; Fundación Telefónica, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Instituto Cervantes de Pekin, China; Instituto Cervantes de Chicago, USA;  Instituto Cervantes de Sao Paulo, Brazil; Centro de Arte y Naturaleza de Huesca, Spain; Museo de Bellas Artes de Santander, Spain; Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Spain; Museo de Bellas Artes de Santiago de Chile; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago de Chile; Museo Da Casa Brasileira, Sao Paulo, Brazil; (CAF) Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía, Almería, Spain; Centro de Arte de Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain; Casa América, Madrid, Spain; Museo Laboratorio, Pescara, Italy; Casal de Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; and, CEART, Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente, Fuenlabrada, Madrid.

Emilio Navarro is a curator of contemporary art exhibitions. Between 1979 and 1986, he worked as an assistant at the Kreisler Gallery in Madrid. In 1987, he founded his own gallery in Madrid dedicated to the dissemination of contemporary artistic trends. From 1999 to 2001, he directed three consecutive editions of the "Transit" International Art Fair in Toledo. In 2003, he joined the Caja de Burgos team to launch the CAB, Caja de Burgos Art Center. From October 2003 to December 2006, he served as Deputy Director of the Center and from January 2007 to November 2015 as Director. He has curated numerous individual exhibitions of international artists. He has participated as a lecturer and published texts related to artists and contemporary aesthetics and as a jury in various artistic competitions.