IGNACIO HENRIQUEZ / MIQUE MARCHANT / RAUL MIRANDA

Introduce an exhibition preview from Santiago, Chile, “De Ansia y Pudor” (Of Craving and Modesty) – created by Ignacio Henríquez, Mique Marchant and Raúl Miranda.

“De Ansia y Pudor” (@ansiaypudor), is a creative project by the visual artists Ignacio Henríquez (35), Mique Marchant (37) and Raúl Miranda (56), who raise questions about the construction of masculinity, affection and circulation of homosexual desire. Developed in a year of conversations about the appearance of desire in the lives of dissident masculinities, and about intimate manifestations and practices in a hyper-connected world, the exhibition presents works that oscillate between the memories of an erotic memory and a present emptied of meaning; Hyperrealistic graphite drawings on paper by Henríquez, sculptures and a sound piece by Marchant, and industrial printing photographs plus a video by Miranda, as well as a site-specific collective piece titled “C/L (con lugar)”.

How to talk about oneself and do work without falling into the cliché?
Hard. Perhaps referring to otherness, to its trace. At the moment that the desire awakens, the desire for another equal to oneself. A ghostly presence that permanently builds the imagination as a weight that is more alive than dead due to its absence, manifesting itself in daily rites, from a steaming cup of coffee waiting for a like online, to a candid walk or cruising through the streets. A city depleted by riots, pandemics, institutional failure with the smell of a corpse, anxiety and sadness. Eros and Thanatos are present in everyday life and memory.

Maricón, Raro, Cuir, Cola, Marginal, Gay, are once offensive words, and later politicized, resignified, like the bodies that have suffered and suffer verbal and physical aggressions for their opposition to the standardization of heteronormative desire. Today, despite the indelible remnants of the original violence, they have become, in their new meaning, tradable concepts of culture and art. Everything has a price, everything is recovered by the market, intimacy is sold or given away in the absence of a symbolic exchange. I am merchandise and I have a price on social media platforms, where I appear and circulate with the digital image of what I long to be.

Perhaps we can escape the cliché by speaking of desire not as consumption and possession, but as the vulnerability of our own bodies and psyches built on layers and layers of images, stimuli, visions, fantasies, traumas, pains, joys, and pleasure, nullifying once more through artistic creation the borders of the real, the symbolic, the imaginary and (Lacan forgive us) the virtual.

Of desire and modesty: variations on a certain construction of desire

Thinking about desire opens up a wide spectrum of possibilities for us, so wide that it is better to say infinity. We all want different things, but there are also others that are hatched by the norm or by our own search. Raúl Miranda, Mique Marchant and Ignacio Henríquez exhibit some of their forms, which they materialize from what they have experienced. We could talk of crooked appetites, of its social and historical codification, but also of how it is reappropriated, since there is nothing wrong with what has gone astray. Saying this can be obvious, despite the heterosexual regime continuing as valid as ever and with it, the different forms of violence that it generates. Insisting on other ways of articulating desire and its pleasures is pertinent to interrupt the normative.
The Plaza de Armas is a historical place for the LGBTQI+ resistance. Almost 50 years ago the first protests were held here motivated by boredom in the face of the police and social siege towards their identities. The square today continues to be a place of actively permanent memory as well as a place of sexual encounters. In this apartment overlooking the square, photographs, videos, audios, sculptures and drawings are gathered to wander through those desires that motivate encounters, but also the ones that do not materialize; that end up diluted or truncated.
From a collaborative work, in process and in connection with “Descentrar” (the gallery´s 2022 submission theme), and from a intergenerational crossroad, the artists invite us to review –among other matters– how the sexual encounters are configured in post-pandemic times, overcoming the prohibition of contact. Although it is worth asking ourselves: were the contacts, rubbing, caresses, penetrations ever completely suspended?
Finally, “Of Craving and Modesty: variations on a certain construction of desire” is for us an alternative to exhibit a queer collectiveness capable of uniting and connecting experiences. These are the ones arranged through the different pieces, which as distorted mirrors, will show us how much of it corresponds to us or differentiates us as we look at ourselves through them.

Seba Calfuqueo + Mariairis Flores Leiva (Espacio 218 Curators)

Ignacio Henríquez @ignacio.henriquez.c
Self-taught visual artist specialized in hyper-realistic graphite drawing. Dreamlike and intimate, his work focuses on exploring different dimensions of the coexistence of trauma and the body. In his hyper realistic self-portraits, he dissects memory through meticulous traces, a process which gives new meaning to the damage caused by abuse. These works contravene a masculine imaginary that reinforces characteristics such as integrity, vigor, impenetrability, presenting on the contrary a masculinity that allows itself to connect with its emotionality, vulnerability, and capacity for self-reflection.

Mique Marchant @miquemarchant
Poet and visual artist. Dedicated mainly to writing, he has created various texts in collaboration with the Antenna Foundation on the work of artists such as Paz Errázuriz, Voluspa Jarpa, Andrés Durán, Cristián Salineros and others. Inquiring into the matter of desire, otherness, identities and death, he has written two unpublished books: “Plastic”; a compilation of poems and short stories that appear as feverish dreams verifying a reality bordering on what we perceive, and “La Veladura”; a collection of poems that balances between the fortuitous of an existence forged in human understanding.

Raúl Miranda www.minimale.cl / @jrmirandag
He is a visual-performing artist, writer, academic, researcher, art curator and founder of the transdisciplinary group Minimale (1999 to 2022). His work, which began in the mid-1980s, is characterized by the movement typical of the fusion of contemporary visual arts with stage, film and literary languages, oscillating from LiveCinema to Video Installation and writing. He has participated repeatedly at the BAM in Santiago, exhibited at the Chilean Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and MAMChiloé, and published his texts in Chile and abroad, as well as participating in various international creation residencies.