It was great to return to Valparaiso and spend time with some of its amazingly creative minds. We spent a day considering what a design for the south might be. The students are very interested in the way design relates to community and were making some quite seriously proposes for developing products that both created wealth and sustained local culture. But the Chileanness came out particularly when considering how to interpret their national dance, cueca, through design. Here is the future of Chilean craft and design!

The opening of the South Project at Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho in Santiago de Chile. Arturo Navarro, the director of Mapocho, welcomed visitors along with the Craft Victoria director Kevin Murray and Minister of Culture Paulina Urrutia. They ended by reciting together Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Mapocho. The speeches were preceded by a rogativa, the tradition welcome from the Mapuche people. Afterwards, guests visited the opening of the Make the Common Precious exhibition and the installation by Elida Tesler.   

Make the Common Precious opened in Santiago tonight with great fanfare. The Chilean Minister of Culture Paulina Urrutia officiated at the opening, despite having just flown in from Spain that morning. She was given a personal tour of the exhibition and expressed great joy at the marvellous transformations that the makers had enabled. The opening included speakers reciting from a Pablo Neruda Ode the Estacion Mapocho, the venue of the exhibition. It seemed the perfect time and place. Pictured is the exhibitino designer Felipe Berguño, his mother-in-law the weaver Patricia Antunez, and Filipe’s partner the jeweller Guillermina Antunez who was South Project’s first artist in residence in 2004.

Chiloé is an island off the coast of Chile about the same latitude as Tasmania, though Chiloé is probably even colder and wetter than Tasmania. Like Tasmania, Chiloé has a resilient craft tradition. Borne of the mixture of indigneous Maphuche and Spanish traditions, Chiloé is a proud refuge of traditional folkore, manifest in is fantastic mythologies, thumping music and especially weaving. One of the first Chilote towns you encounter after leaving the ferry from Porte Montt is Ancud. Marcia Mancilla is a resident and has established a significant textile workshop called Kelgwo, after the Mapuche name for loom. There she works with Mapuche women using the traditional methods of weaving and experiments with different dyes to embue her works with the local grasses and barks. Her more sculptural creation incorporate grasses to create a warm reflection of the muted hues of the Chilote landscape. Her clothes are solidly woven making the most of handspun techniques and employing her own designs. Maria’s work can be found in Design for Valparaiso and on her website.  

Chiloé is quite isolated from the mainstream. It took me six hours by bus to reach my destination after leaving the closest airport. One venerable inhabitant described her town to me, with a smile, as the ‘fin del mundo’ (end of the world). With few riches and far from the entertainment capitals, Chiloé is a shining example of how the common can be made precious.

For an account of the South Kids story that was delivered to the children of a school in Quinchao, go to the Undercurrents post.