SHADOWS IN QUILLAGUA | Carlos Rendón When the winning artists from the open call for Now or Never proposed to lead a workshop during their immersion trip to Quillagua, it was something completely new for the festival. Three of them teamed up to offer to bring the children of the town into the depths of the Atacama Desert for a unique experience that would not only take advantage of each of the artist’s individual expertise, but also an inexhaustible source of fuel in the North of Chile: the sun. The idea for the workshop was to use photographic paper that reacted to sunlight, in order to print the forms of meaningful objects from Quillagua. A small print shop was set up on the main field of the school, along with tables, chairs, and trays filled with lemon water. A short time later, it resembled a photo lab . The initial instructions had been for the students to gather objects that represent their hometown, inviting them to view it as a sort of treasure hunt. All kinds of things started to appear: from bones, toys and seeds, to a doll’s arm, bottle caps and other odds and ends. The compilation offered the schoolchildren an opportunity to find different meanings in their everyday environment. After overcoming some initial hesitation, their imagination was given free rein, and from hidden corners, or perched up in the trees, they began to see things differently, that patio, that dirt, that landscape. With the objects on the tables, each student began to design their print, placing the odds and ends on the photographic paper; some at random, others making sketches, trying to reproduce images characteristic of the place, such as trees or animals that are seen in the town on a daily basis. It took the sun ten minutes to imprint pictures on the paper. After wetting the paper with lemon water, the object’s shadows became impregnated, acquiring a whitish tone against the paper’s blue background. The shadow became the brush upon that small but surprising canvass. The students’ teacher kept the remaining photographic paper so that they could do the activity again at school, and the students were left with instructions on how to produce more of the paper at home. And so, in the classroom that is the driest desert on the planet, the students will be able to use all of that sunshine in a creative, new way.
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