"I think that for as long as I can remember, I have related to art in a natural and perhaps somewhat unconscious way."
Cristián Silva, 2021
Cristián Silva is a Chilean artist, teacher and independent curator. Trained in thefield of printmaking in the late 1980s and part of the first generation of artistsfrom Chile's post-dictatorship era, Silva has cultivated an artistic language thatdraws inspiration from history, mythology, social critique and psychology.
Moved bya wide range of subjects that are on one level deeply personal as well as part ofthe general culture, Silva creates wall paintings, sculptures, objects, installations,videos and drawings that build together an allegorical environment embedded withsociopolitical quotes.
His peculiar vision of culture, past and present, is ofteninfused with subtle and occasionally candid humor, resulting in a dense network ofinformation. Silva’s work inhabits a sphere where the political meets theexistential; a zone where, for example, Socialist, Fascist and Masonic imagerycoexist in tense harmony.
By displaying this disparate collection of elements —thathe sometimes refers to asSubjects in Suspension— the artist delivers a complex yetunassuming chronicle of his own experience in the so-called periphery: golf balls,plastic bottles, peach pits, chocolate bars, an oversized machete, discarded tartanblankets, potatoes or an old window blind, become part of Silva's symbolic flotsamalphabet, one that ambiguously negotiates with the never ending issues of classstruggle and post-colonial identity in Latin America.