A FLOWER IN THE CRATER | Dagmara Wyskiel Each year when we make our group pilgrimage to the desert, what we are hoping to find in the faces of the visitors we bring with us is that look of astonishment that you don’t usually see in adults anymore. And it always happens, in between the endless empty stretches, the overwhelming barrenness of the landscape, and that tangible existentialism embodied in stone. The desert is eternal, the people there only lapses. It wasn’t the same, arriving in town with no doña Felisa there to greet us. Neither did the town’s mascot, Madonna the donkey, appear. This time, the desert fauna that drew near came in the form of scorpions, apparently residents of the new hostal Sol de Quillagua, fruit of the expansion made by the owner of the unforgettable Quillagua Space. A folkloric group from the neighboring region of Tarapacá danced for the artists, changing their wardrobe three times, according to the schematics of the cultural division of Chile –north, central, and south– on the thick pillared stage of the adjacent building, probably one of the most cosmic places in the desert, the covered pool. On top of the fixed stops made on this yearly trip (Chacabuco, Chug Chug geoglyphs, Sloman dam, and the Valley of Meteorites) we added an opportunity for stargazing beneath the clearest skies on the planet, this time without the presence of any specialist. What at first seemed like a collective attempt at deciphering a Chinese poem, making associations based on the form of its script, ended in silence, with an acceptance of the beauty without any need to understand it. The large crater again received a group of humans into its warm and safe interior. Insignificant in the face of its volume, some remained contemplating and capturing the sunset above, while others raised dust that slid down towards the bottom. Kotoaki Asano, the same artist that brought a bit of Japanese sand to the Atacama desert, was now preparing his second minimalist offering. An organic form made of stones and Japanese paper, whose shape suggested a nest, emerged for an instant in the driest place on the planet. It was a gesture that resembled the one made by Rafael Silva in SACO4, who five years prior, had crafted a poetic dance space in the Valley of Meteorites. In both cases the contrast between that which symbolizes life –though represented in an artificial manner– and the surrounding area choking in its absence, opened the door to imagine other natures, perhaps existing in some other place or some other dimension.
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