Rodolfo Andaur

Contemporary Art Curator

Rodolfo Andaur was born in Iquique in the north of Chile. He studied journalism and holds an MA in Art History. He has worked as contemporary art curator promoting and diffusing Chilean artistic practices and has participated in curatorial residencies in Brazil, Denmark, Germany, México, Poland, Singapore, Spain, South Korea and United States. He’s been working in the Atacama desert whose image is super interesting in the field of visual arts.

Each project he’s developed there highlights both territory and its nature.  

Your greatest inspirations or influences?

For sure visual arts culture inspire me every day, however Latin American cinema gives me a lot of issues to write virtuoso concepts, territories and evoke new landscapes. 

Can you tell us about project Fragua?

Fragua is project organized by Galeria Barrios Bajos in Valdivia (south of Chile). The directors Gabriela Urrutia and Elisa Figueroa invited me to work on the coastline of that region with more than 40 people, most of them visual artists. This project focused in exploration trip methodology to understand the anthropocene. Also I read some poems with the Mexican curator Amanda de la Garza.

The main goal of this was to combine our voices with the nature and how the participants connect with this atmosphere into a damage context.

Challenges of what you do? 

The visual art culture named me as curator, a person whose main projects are related with art exhibition, however my main projects are approaching with sustainability, territory and geography outdoor. Nature allows me to work in its landscape. All of these imaginaries remark new symbols, languages and borders. 

How do you see the art world changing, as a curator, and someone so interested in geography, how do you see the impact of climate change in your work?

I'm from Chile and the consequences of the climate change are super strong. We are living in a horrifying epoch so my projects can be respectful form of address to the people are suffering nowadays. I'm sure the art world has a huge responsibility to spread the protection of the nature in a global scale.

Art is a political tool, it's time to use it in that way. Time's out. 

Do you have favourite websites, publications or social media handles? 

I think to name a couples of pages in not fair. I got to see a lot of super cool pages in relation with creativity. But I can tell you about some interesting publications as "A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None" by Kathryn Yusoff; "Decolonizing Nature" by T.J. Demos; and some of the publications of the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. 

My instagram.

Most interesting response you've heard in regards to your work?

Most of the people I've worked with say I got the commitment to expand the artists' work into several branches of knowledge.

Anything else you'd like to share with us?

Nowadays I'm working in an exploration trip through Bolivian Chiquitanía organized by Kiosko https://www.kioskogaleria.com/. We are gonna be a group of 20 artists and thinkers who will interrogate the nature, that damage nature affected for the fires ate the end of 2019. We have a lot to do with that. I'm convinced we have to be very close of the nature's cosmovision from there we can rescue some ideas to protect it of human irresponsibility. 

Cover photography credit Paula Salas Mercado.