SACO9 Now or never

UPROOTED | Francisca Caporali Jahir Jorquera was born in María Elena, a city that proudly defines itself as the last nitrate town on earth, while Simone Cortezão is a mineira artist, just like me. Our identities bear the marks of the economic activity that has shaped the history of the state where we are from, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The context of extractivist activities, as well as the contradictions that they create in the lives of those who inhabit regions economically dependent on said activities, is so strong that it blends into the cultural identity.

This exhibition is the result of the displacement of these two artists. Simone traveled from Brazil to Chile in January of 2020 and Jahir took the opposite route, in March of the same year. Their respective trips were the result of cooperation between JA.CA - Art and Technology Center and the SACO Corporation, the purpose of which was to produce reflections on the territories of Jardim Canadá and Antofagasta. The exchange was an attempt to reflect on the failures of a context characterized by the breakdown of an economic model based on exploitation and the resultant impact on communities living in a constant state of alert.

In their travels, the artists sought more than to simply raise questions about mining, but rather understand how their life experiences related to a landscape that was so different, and at the same time recognizable.

The twin landscapes of those two different parts of the global south were rebuilt from Simone’s photographs, windows that bring together Minas and Antofagasta, and where one can hardly be distinguished from the other. Those diptychs show the impacts that centuries of despoliation have had on the land, offering us a rough outline of how, in both cases, the establishment of extractivist industries, and thus everyday life, turn into ephemeral ruins devoid of history. Simone searched for traces of the past in order to understand what some of those lived moments were like, creating a small photographic register where a series of pictures fill in some of the spaces that were reclaimed by the desert dust.

During his stay in Jardim Canadá, Jahir set out to unearth family memories and references to his own life within the culture of Brazil. Named after one of the most famous football players from the 1980’s, Jairzinho, the artist arrived in Brazil at a time in which his name had taken on a different meaning for the population. “É melhor JAIR se acostumando!” (“It would be better if you get used to JAIR!”) was one of the phrases that marked the convulsive electoral process in which Jair Messias Bolsonaro ended up being elected the president of Brazil. With the choice of that name, the father hoped to reflect the athletic dexterity and manliness of 104