The term “syndemic” was introduced in the 1990s in anthropological medicine to describe two or more concurrent epidemics in a population, which enhance the disease burden. Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa uses this term as a metaphor to analyse the social movements that took place in Chile and Latin America between 2019 and 2023.

In the first edition of the Julius Baer Art Prize for Latin American Female Artists, Syndemic received the first prize of this kind in Latin America, which aims to reward research work conducted by outstanding Latin American female artists.

Syndemic is the result of a collaborative process of teamwork involving female artists and intellectuals from different fields of knowledge, both scientific and humanistic, that delves into the sensitive events related to the social outbursts in Latin America, and highlights the mechanisms of democratic consensus in tension with authoritarian institutional practices that conceal ways of silencing citizens’ discontent.

ARTWORKS

Cartografía de la Sindemia
(Cartography of the Syndemic)
OBVERSE: Series of 10 hanging graphic cartographies that review, from different points of view and territories, the social outbursts of 2019-2023 in Latin America. Territorial maps, data, graphics and archives that link economy, ecology and territorial ancestral matrix were used. In this way, the aim is to establish readings, narratives and emphases that allow us to think the multiple variables of the cycle of social crises in the Andean zone of South America.
REVERSE: Satellite image of the entire Andes mountain range from Venezuela to Patagonia (Chile/Argentina) forms the image of an Andean territory, diverse but with a common matrix. On it hang yellow and blue threads that contain the names, ages and countries of more than 400 fatal or permanently damaged victims of the social outbursts occurred in Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, in the social movements and coups d’état occurred between 2019 and 2023 that allow asking the question that something in common happens in the Andean region of South America and that is reflected in those names, ages and localities.

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Trauma ocular
(Ocular trauma)
Video in which eleven young people recount the circumstances in which they were shot in the eyes. The material forms a choral story that tells the experience, the description of police violence and how this event changed their lives. The second part of the work focuses on eight of them who decided to form a musical band of victims of ocular trauma and ends with a recording from a terrace of CIMA Gallery where you can see down the Plaza Dignidad/ Baquedano/Italia (the different names that the square has assumed over time), epicenter of the social outbreak, where they sing one of their songs, which alludes to the experience.

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2022
Los Estamos Grabando
(We’re recording you)
Video made from complaints against police violence recorded by citizens during the 2019 social outburst and uploaded to social networks.

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Sindemia
(Syndemic)
Video with musical piece composed especially for the work Sindemia. The music narrates specific moments of the outbreak: young people shot with ocular trauma, mothers of young prisoners, territory, and location of the protest through the sonority of the orchestra that uses instruments from America from Alaska to Patagonia. Visually, the work uses archive images of the protest, a recording of a child made in the Mapocho River which runs across the city of Santiago and images of the orchestra playing native instruments of the American continent.