The Language of Stones | Sebastián Riffo

Sebastián Riffo

I worked at ISLA Artistic Residency Center in Antofagasta from April 17 to 20, 2021, looking to know the biennial main theoric and methodologic lines. Then I traveled to San Pedro de Atacama, specifically to the art residency La Tintorera, directed by artist and social worker Verónica Moreno, in Solcor Ayllu, a few steps from the historic downtown of San Pedro.

Between April 20 and May 7, I learned about the ancient and delicate art of dyeing with natural pigments. At the same time, I was introduced to the ancestral knowledge of Los Andes, meeting people from Lickan-Antay and Atacameña cultures. In La Tintorera my main workshop spaces were the kitchen and the bonfire in the backyard. Verónica and I boiled almost 10 meters of fabric with different dye materials, including turmeric, eucalyptus leaves, cochineal, and white and red onion. The rhythm of the work was related to the slow but systematic process of firing, drying and ironing the fabrics. With the yellows, purples and greens that resulted, I created multicolor geometric patterns and molds with an undeniable Andean influence. I did a video that slowly explores the Taira eave´s surface, and also a largeformat painting that gives an account of its panoramic view.

I also worked on different paintings with direct and figurative references to the rupestrian art in the rocky eave of Taira. The collection of pictographs and petroglyphs is located 75 kilometers northeast of the city of Calama, in Alto Loa, at about 3,150 meters above sea level and dating from approximately 800 to 400 BC. I was interested in studying these expressions related to their natural, geographic, stellar, and cosmic environment beyond their communicative potential. For me, thinking in this old world is re-imagining the sacred and magic space and, above all, the possible harmony between human beings and nature. At the same time, it is an opportunity to reflect on its disappearance since it is well documented how the Taira eave has been affected by the destruction and the robbery of its components.

Thanks to the links between the biennial and Helena Horta Tricallotis from the Institute for Archaeological Research and the Museum of the Catholic University of the North (IIAM), I got to know deeply the scientific research that has systematized some of the wisdoms and knowledges expressed in Taira. However, my main learning and emotional gain were going there to see it onsite, on June 8th of 2021, through the biennial arrangements, guided by professor Silvia Lisoni from the tourist agency Sol del Desierto.

We arrived at the eave, bordering and crossing bare-footed the zigzagging Loa River, framed by its monumental canyon of more than 60 meters high. It was a touching spectacle; colossal rock walls, hills, and volcanoes embraced us between water springs and bushy foxtails. Watching it directly and without mediators was understanding all the things that photographs or scientific

illustrations couldn´t express. The pilgrimage and trek as the first sensitive experiences; the eave size and its appeal to our own body as a measure of the space; its vast volumetric extension, and the effort that its contemplation demanded. The multiple forms of the stones´ dimensions; their textures, the thickness and depth of the pierced lines, the pigments and their interaction with the traces of the stones where they were drawn, among many other factors.

The result of my residency was a video that slowly explores the Taira eave´s surface. I also did a large-format painting that gives an account of its panoramic view. The size and immersive potential aimed to boost a sensitive experience involving the gaze and the body. I presented smaller canvases inspired by Taira´s art fragments with geometric shapes alluding to the Andean textile culture. This residency experience vindicated different ways of making and understanding Andean art as a live, multiform, transhistorical and no-linear language, which questions our contemporaneity from its indications and rearrangements, together with its formal and symbolic transfiguration.