Pacífico

Brazilian artist Jonathas de Andrade understands his artistic role as an explorer and inventor of imagined scenarios and their potential outcomes, undertaking these investigations as a researcher, sociologist, and “fiction maker.” Pacífico is the result of the artist’s travels though Bolivia and Chile, where de Andrade realized there was a distinct discrepancy in the historical treatment of the late 19th century War of the Pacific. During the war, Chile gained great swathes of land from both Bolivia and Peru, including Bolivia’s only access to the Pacific Ocean. While in contemporary Chile, this gain is barely mentioned in historical accounts, in Bolivia even the smallest bookstores contain embittered chronicles of the loss. Pacífico – rendered in Styrofoam and paper, teaching materials common to the region – functions as a didactic moral and civic comment. His pared down visual approach allows the artist to experiment with a delirious tone that could only be associated with conflict, violence, and historic resentment. Ultimately, de Andrade is able to offer a fictive solution that quietly takes place on a peaceful moonlit night.

– Alicia Reuter