Palermitan artist Irene Coppola and architect Vito Priolo relate their journey to the Atacama Desert. Through a series of visual and audio documents, drawings, sculptures and local materials with strong symbolic value they describe a fragile ecosystem that is being radically changed by mass tourism and mining extractivism. They reflect on the contradictions of current politics regarding the distribution of resources in the desert region, where the world’s largest lithium and copper mines are located.
Credits: Sandra Sonia Flores Gonzales, lama shepherdess of the Lickan Antay indigenous community.
Short excerpt from conversations with Sandra Sonia Flores Gonzales, pastor of the Lickan Antay indigenous community:
SSFG: …We learned that in Panama there is a culture called Kuna (Guna), and Kuna in our Kunza language means “we” or “our,” so we imagined that their ancestors came from the desert, which is why we believe we are the same culture, the Lickan Antay. Perhaps we live in different places because in
the past some families moved elsewhere to seek better living conditions, and in fact we speak the Kunza language in other territories. We, on the other hand, have almost completely lost it! As a culture, we are not pure or unique, we also use Quechua and Aymara words, so languages have mixed over time from one side of the Andes to the other.
IC: Which of these is the oldest language?
SSFG: All the guttural languages are very old and you can’t write them down… and I’ll tell you more: when Chile entered free trade one of the requirements was to recognize their indigenous peoples and here they recognized us as ethnic Atacameña which is not the same thing as Lickan Antay culture, we are the Lickan Antay culture!
Credits: View from the Mirador de Calama of the world’s largest copper mine known as Chuquicamata or Chuqui.
VP: You were saying that the Lickan Antay are located between Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina?
SSFG: No no no…Chile, Bolivia and Argentina and possibly other places where
some families have moved…
VP: …clear, families that have expanded by forming other communities.
SSFG: Exactly!…Let’s walk or else the llamas will leave us here! (laughter)
Algarrobo fruit and oxide pigment, installation detail on the construction of a desert plant alphabet.
Irene Coppola (Palermo, 1991) Visual artist who investigates the liminal space between nature and culture and the artistic display as a political device through different media ranging from sculpture, video, and environmental installation.
Vito Priolo (Palermo, 1987) Independent architect whose practice focuses on the relationship
between local materials and architectural types through sustainable design as a specific response to local constraints and social conditions.
Project supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2023).