2002
C-Print
variable dimensions
Edition of 5 + 1 AP
«Michelle-Marie Letelier’s project is titled ERASE and it comes from an acid view on its multiple definition. On one side, you can understand it as the start in a story. “Erase una vez…”. And on the other hand, the word translated in English, to erase. Her work concentrates on the act of erasing a family space in which she gives the opportunity to pronounce it as the Spanish storytelling phrase “Once upon a time”. Taking this fable in function, the phrase makes us wonder in the habitability conditions of mining camp as an institutional concentration model.
The “waist dumps” cover the urban installations. The miners have been moved. The basic installations, such as housing and hospital are already covered by tons of this material. Michelle-Marie Letelier has made this register of concealment a model of exceptional work. Her studies in art give her the necessary tools to go back and intervene the memory of this occupation and not merely document the displacement.»
Justo Pastor Mellado
Photographs taken in John Bradford houses, Chuquicamata, Chile.
- Exhibited at CODELCO Corporate Building, Calama, Chile; BECH Gallery, Santiago, Chile and Perlini Arte Gallery, Padua, Italy
