Searching for the Language. A Possible Dialogue between Artistic, Activist and Curatorial Practices

This paper delves into the project SILVER RIGHTS (2020-2022), initiated by Italian artist Elena Mazzi in dialogue with Mapuche spiritual leader and silversmith Mauro Millán and Argentinian artist Eduardo Molinari, and supported by ar/ge kunst. As cultural operators, a visual artist and a curator, we felt the importance of sharing this project we have been working on for several years, unpacking complexities and difficulties we encountered along the way. SILVER RIGHTS unfolds around the role that silver jewelry plays in the social, spiritual and political life of The Mapuche, the Indigenous people inhabiting lands across Chile and Argentina. Accordingly, the central nucleus of the project consists of a series of six silver jewellery pieces crafted by Mauro Millán and designed in dialogue with Elena Mazzi following workshops on symbologies and current struggles, held with numerous members of the Mapuche community. Furthermore, the project confronts the Museum Leleque in Patagonia, established by Italian company Benetton; a museum that dismisses the Mapuche people as an extinct culture ‘museumizing’ their memory and material culture. The jewels, alongside a complex installation display with documentary and research materials, have been exhibited at ar/ge kunst, Italy, and other international venues. Drawing on anthropologist Viveiros de Castro’s (2007) writings, the paper reads the dialogue between Mauro Millán and Elena Mazzi, as practice towards inventing of culture and inter-ethnic politics. More generally, through the work of Azoulay (2019), Acosta (2013) and Esposito Yussif (2019) the paper addresses how contemporary cultural institutions preserve separative and neo-extractivist practices. Ultimately, it aims to propose ways in which exhibition-making and display politics can activate mediation, recomposition, and healing as countermeasures against the perpetuation of colonial narratives.