Catalina Swinburn

Santiago de Chile, Chile, 1979

            It could be said that for Catalina Swinburn being an artist was part of a natural process. Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, her family of origin, with its well-known painters and architects, marked the path of art.  Swinburn assumes that legacy, which she defines as an inheritance but also as an education. Trained in Visual Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Católica, she also studied photography and media. This mix of disciplines has led her work to include installations, performances, photographs and sculptures, all threaded by the theme of memory.  

            Her work, a syncretic bricolage, includes the series Fisuras como metáforas (2017). There she displays a set of large-scale works elaborated on paper that deepen her concern for the banishment of archaeological works that were later exhibited in other countries as a symbol of power. Each piece, constructed as a sort of origami with multiple folds and fissures, retrieves through the manual work of documentation the memory of multiple territories and results in large woven cloaks, presented as metaphors of resistance.         

            Her interest in mixtures is perhaps related to her own trajectory and her position as a Latin American woman artist. Currently, she moves between Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires and London, a situation that raises questions about identity and ways of looking at the world: her work examines the diverse subjective perspectives, the processes of transculturation, miscegenation and multiple realities. From her point of view, an artist is the one who produces a work which can be contemplated and moving; but, also, they are those who produce works that allow to experience and reflect on local history, politics and social issues.