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 between October 2019 and March 2020.

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.

Voluspa Jarpa’s artistic practice focuses on the detailed analysis of official declassified archives and documents with an emphasison hidden narratives. Her work explores notions of memory and trauma, frequently alluding to the Chilean socio-political situation and its position within the Latin American context.

Syndemic is a multimedia project featuring videos, musical pieces, installations, cartographies, animations, documents, reports, testimonies, photographs, paintings and objects. It is the result of a collaborative teamwork involving female artists and intellectuals from different fields of knowledge, both scientific and humanistic.

Syndemic delves into the sensitive events surrounding one of the most dramatic social outbursts in the history of Chile and highlights the mechanisms of democratic consensus in tension with authoritarian institutional practices that conceal ways of silencing citizen discontent.

ARTWORKS

Cartografía de la Sindemia
(Cartography of the Syndemic)
Series of 9 graphic cartographies installed on wall, which review from different points of view and territories the social outbursts of 2019-2020 in Latin America.
Territorial maps, data, graphics and archives that link economy, ecology and territorial ancestral matrix were used. In this way, it is intended to establish readings, narratives and emphases that allow thinking the multiple variables of the cycle of social crises in Chile and South America.

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Historia/Histeria
(History/Hysteria)
Installation consisting of silhouettes of demonstrators printed on fabric and the projection of a video animation, composed of two digitally worked recordings: the beginning of the march of October 25, called the largest in history, filmed in the square, and the performance History/Hysteria made by women in the same square two years after the events, filmed with the same camera.
The model-sculpture synthesizes the condensed times in the urban/historical space of the Square, following the model of an astrolabe.

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Repositorio
(Repository)
This work gathers documents, reports, complaints, denunciations and analysis drawings that tell, from the archive, the story of the events and their consequences.

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Los disfrazados de la revuelta
(The disguised revolt)
The people who disguised themselves to attend the protests narrate their experiences and the relationship they established with their disguise. The monument that stood in the square before the protests began, where this group performed, no longer exists.

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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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Chile, mi país
(Chile, my country)
Video that gathers some interviews with the mothers of young people imprisoned during the revolt. In some cases the pretrial detention without trial lasted almost three years.
The video focuses on the experience of motherhood as a political evolution and presents a clash between the mother-child bond and the police state.

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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.

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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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Tótem
(Totem)
Installation composed of a forest made up of trees printed on canvas: 8 urban trees located at “ground zero” -with traces of munitions on their trunks- and 16 trees that are in nature. The pieces are from floor to ceiling in height, which configures a kind of forest-frieze.

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Láseres x perdigones
(Lasers x buckshots)
Piece that synthesizes the clash between demonstrators and police, with round lead weights that resemble the buckshots used by the police during the social outbreak, while the lasers recall those used by the demonstrators to dazzle them and try to protect themselves. The golden pellets represent the damaged or mutilated eyes of the demonstrators.