About the exhibit “My Stories”
City Lights Gallery’s “My Stories” Exhibit Recalls the 1973 Chilean Coup and life under dictatorship.
City Lights Gallery, at 265 Golden Hill Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut, presents “My Stories,” an exhibit recalling the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile that brought dictator Augusto Pinochet to power and the decades that followed. The exhibit runs from November 7, 2024 to January 15, 2025. City Lights is on the web at https://bridgeportarttrail.org and can be reached by telephone at (203)984-8613.
City Lights is the headquarters of the Bridgeport Art Trail, the annual city-wide arts celebration weekend, representing 200 artists, organizations and initiatives. The 16th Art Trail takes place November 7 -10th. Bridgeport is a city of 150,000 with a concentration of seven (soon to be nine) arts studio buildings. During the Art Trail weekend, some 7,000 attendees will tour Bridgeport’s arts venues, just after the current volatile, polarized election in the U.S.
Visitors to “My Stories” will learn about the cathartic power of the arts, which serve as a platform to address painful and difficult topics. In “My Stories,” Chilean fiber artists share their stories and the stories of those who lived under the Pinochet dictatorship. It’s a period that today’s Chileans rarely talk about. Reviewing Chile's history of the violent transfer of power and the years that followed offers much experiential knowledge and a realization that the freedom we in the USA may take for granted, is precious.
Lead artists/curators are Chilean artist Carlos Biernnay, who has lived and made art in Bridgeport for years, and Paola Figueroa Perez, curator of TP Gallery in Quillota, Chile. This exhibit is produced by artistic director Suzanne Kachmar and sponsored by CT Humanities. That funding enabled City Lights Gallery and these artists to present important personal stories and relevant universal themes.
Exhibiting artists are Marcia Saavedra Abarca, Elizabeth Morales Agoni, Paola Honores Alvarez, Antonella Auda, Carlos Biernnay, Cynthia Araya Davalos, Lilla Knakalova, Lorena Figueroa Lara, Ruby Perez Lizana, Esperanza Silva Lopez, Nataly Herrera Martinez, Patricia Aguilar Mieres, Paola Figueroa Perez, Denisse Quijada Pizarro, Valencia Rodriguez. Artists’ statements—informative panels in English and Spanish written by Chilean historian Pablo Montero—support the artists’ visual expressions realized in fiber and textiles, along with QR codes. Viewers can use their phones to hear and see the artists talk about their work.
Award winning filmmaker/videographer Josue Orellana presents a video montage created specifically for this exhibit to contextualize the history, and the personal stories depicted in the exhibit. Discussions with the artists, and their statements, revealed that it’s cathartic to discuss the Pinochet era with others who experienced it, not least because of the need to prevent history from repeating itself.
Artist Paola Honores Alvarez writes that people in Chile “live in the shadow of a big power, a society that blinds us, hypnotizes us, infects us, excites us, intimidates us and then betrays us. But we continue to look north for our American dream.”
“Turandot” by Carlos Biernnay
Chilean artist Carlos Biernnay was a child during that era, as were many of the artists in the exhibit. They carry with them the trauma accumulated throughout their formative years. Making art is his coping mechanism. He embraces a macabre absurdity and an unending search for beauty—finding it or making it.
Among Biernnay’s passions is opera. The art quilt “Turnadot” is a metaphor for the brutal capriciousness and decadent opulence that unchecked power can inflict on a society. The menacing military figure on the right edge of the work represents the constant threat of peril and brutality.
Biernnay remembers a Christmas Eve dinner interrupted by the Chilean police coming to his home and taking his grandfather. There was a struggle, the Christmas Eve dinner table was left in ruins, plates broken, wine spilled. The police took his grandfather away, only to return and bring him back because he was told the police made a mistake and went to the wrong house. Although grateful to have the patriarch of the family back home, the psychological trauma instilled in him the fear of horrible and brutal uncertainty. Blue faces in “Turandot” reflect flashbacks of finding a corpse while playing in an abandoned house with other children, memories of military oppression and violence are with him always. Art and music were ways that youth could express and rebel.
Currently Biernnay is also exhibiting in Venice and Miami, and the Biennale in Guimares, Portugal. He is also working on a large commission for the Bridgeport CT Public Library. Biernnay came to the U.S. after the Pinochet regime ended, and now makes art and lives in Bridgeport. He returns to Chile frequently.
Underscoring the absurdity is the date of Pinochet’s military coup, 9/11/1973. After the Pinochet regime, Carlos came to the CT-NY area to study art, pursue his art career and start to heal from the trauma of his youth. Then he experienced the 9/11 attack in the United States. He was not present at the attack sites of that day, but he experienced it as so many did, seeing the ruins, watching the reports and memorials. He extrapolated personal experiences from both 9/11’s to a universal global question “why and who?” What is the nature of man; what and who prompts these acts of mass violence and terror? He expresses this in his works “Scream and Shout” and “Self-portrait with flamingo” For the 20th anniversary of 9/11, curator Suzanne Kachmar organized an exhibit that included a work Carlos made specifically for the exhibit called “Twin Towers”.
“Scream and Shout” by Carlos Biernnay
A frequent reaction from viewers of his work is that the general public did not know both tragedies happened on the same date. Conversations with Carlos and viewers of his work formed the realization that there was much to explore from this content and how art can help to heal from trauma.
Art
1. In “Memorias,” fiber art with bead embroidery, Carlos Biernnay portrays himself in his childhood school uniform surrounded by his toys and dog, while a fine piece of bead work in the form of the angel of death caresses him. (Carlos Biernnay)
2. “Self Portrait with flamingo,” embroidery by Carlos Biernnay.
3.“Scream and Shout” textile collage by Carlos Biernnay
4.“Twin Towers” textile collage by Carlos Biernnay, the twins in red and blue parody the twins Cain and Abel and the 2 political parties in the U.S.A
5.“Turandot” textile collage by Carlos Biernnay
6. “Small Crucifixion” Mixed media by Paola Figureoa Perez
Paola Figueroa Perez works in a traditional artisanal practice working with ratan, natural fibers and ceramic faces that share a similarity to Chile’s ancient Chinchorro mummies, unearthed in Paola’s hometown of Quillota. Paola describes her doll-like objet d’art as “full of symbolism, reflecting what the crucified Christ means, the pain that the country lived throughout our history, from the genocide of the native peoples to the disappearance, torture and persecution of many compatriots in times of dictatorship. Relatives with pain and suffering, are still waiting for answers.” The feet of the figure are bound, evoking the horrible memory of political resistors, ‘enemies’ of Pinochet who were bound and thrown to their death in the water or volcanoes. The artists shared that it was common practice to watch tv to see whose names were broadcasted with a notice to leave the country or be arrested to be detained, tortured or worse. This story evokes a memory of televised Vietnam lottery draft, which left a pall on the evening TV time and a sense of the dreadful unknown young men would encounter being called up for United States military duty.
7. Artist Cynthia Araya Davalos writes: “ Soplo de un vuelo or Mirada interruptada" is part of a series of works that I have been working on. Life and death are separated by fragile limits, it is a thread that separates them, in the journey of coming and going. The narrative of this work begins on September 11, 1973, where my mother gives birth at home to one of my younger sisters (due to the circumstances that were happening at that time in the country, it was impossible to transfer her to a hospital, I was able to observe and feel in fullness, in depth the wonder of receiving a new life, Later I understood that there were hundreds, thousands of people who at that very moment lost it in the bloodiest way. Our coastline reddened, not only ours, but also that of other neighboring or nearby countries as well. Many seas in its depths were covered with rusty bodies. My cloths carry the rust of the railroad tracks that were used to disappear so many people, women, men, young people, the elderly. Age and sex did not matter, only disappear them, erase them, force memory and make it even more fragile. There were children, babies who also disappeared, some being handed over to other families, others were denied the right to their first breath.
With this work I intend to make visible each of the people who wanted to erase, but they are there, because they have never left and together, we are the foundation of tomorrow.
I wanted to quote a study carried out by Leonardo Da Vinci of a child in the mother's womb..."the navel is attached to the placenta and the cotyledons, through which the child is attached to the mother. This is the reason why a desire, a craving, a fright or any other mental illness in the mother influences the child more than the mother herself"...
8. Esperanza Silva writes "Many Didn't Return" is a fragment of the song "Te recuerdo Amanda" by Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, the main icon of my work. My story of the coup is not my story, but my father's. In his capacity as a student, he was arrested and taken to the Chile stadium. While there, he found out that Víctor Jara was isolated along with other political leaders, and it occurred to him to bring him food. After evading the surveillance of the military, he arrives at the room where this group of comrades was and is shocked to see the dying condition of Víctor Jara as a result of the torture. He offers food without success, until a leader invites him to leave for his sake. My father, frustrated and with a feeling of helplessness, remembers the presence of death on Víctor Jara's face. Days later the body of the singer-songwriter was found with 40 bullet wounds, accused of resisting the military forces. Many did not return, my father was able to return to talk about it, Victor, no.
9. Lorena Figueroa depicts “a time in my childhood, growing up listening to the story of my uncle who was forced to belong to the army like many others, to live unimaginable experiences that are still present in his memories to this day. How much he suffered without wanting to participate in this horrible part of our history.”