Patricio Salinas A

My work is conceived as a visual essay of existential nature. This means that the images articulate a discourse around the coordinates of my existence and address themes related to human fragility and uncertainty, collective and individual memory, the violence that permeates society, the search for unwritten history, and my own identity. My visual work is based on personal experiences. From these, my reflections arise—thoughts that have evolved into a visual discourse. This is how the thematic axes emerge, giving meaning to my work, and I share them, for example, with the experiences of Walter Benjamin, such as permanent uprooting, fracture, and uncertainty.

In the visual essay about Walter Benjamin, I don’t approach his figure from his theoretical body, but rather from the perspective of imagination and fiction, exploring what might have been his vulnerabilities during his journey through the French-Catalan Pyrenees.

On the other hand, my work on Atacama constitutes a visual narrative based on my experience in the Chacabuco prison camp during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In my recurrent visits to the Chacabuco prison camp, there is an attempt to rescue objects, documents, and images. Through montage and juxtapositions, I create a constellation with them—a story about a time lost in my memory. The montage leads us to a decontextualization that breaks a linear timeline. I recover fragments of my written notes from the year I spent in Chacabuco, where I describe how the vices of civil society were reproduced in the anomalous society of the prison, addressing class structure, the black market, and influence trafficking. This narrative does not adhere to the norms of political correctness but delves into the human experiences of the prisoners, exploring their dilemmas and fears.

It is a visual work of fractured memory, in which reality and fiction intertwine inextricably.