Francisca García & Mario Navarro | Unearthed Conversation
13.Sep.26
Chilean artists Francisca García and Mario Navarro’s exhibition – 'Unearthed Conversation' – is inspired by the Atacama Desert. Located at the mouth of the Loa River in northern Chile, this is a landscape shaped by diverse narratives: ancient Chango archaeological sites, a geological resemblance to the planet Mars, home to the world’s largest telescopes, and still scarred by the Pinochet dictatorship.
Motivated by Aquí vivieron (1964), a documentary by Chilean filmmakers Pedro Chaskel and Héctor Ríos, as well as images recorded on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover, the artists explore how past, present, and future landscapes converge. Through sculpture, video, sound, textiles and watercolours, they delve into the idea of the surface as a boundary between what is known, when exposed, and the unknown, which lies hidden beneath the ground, and is investigated and discovered. Unearthed Conversation reveals how human ‘discoveries’ are inevitably accompanied by desire, appropriation, and colonization. By focusing on the silent material witnesses of a culture, they contrast fragile early modes of discovery with the optimism surrounding contemporary technological innovation.
In their work, Francisca García (b. 1969, Santiago, Chile) and Mario Navarro (b. 1970, Santiago, Chile) each excavate the visible manifestations of the world around us from their individual perspectives. Although they maintain separate artistic practices, they are collaborating on this project at S.M.A.K. They share a ‘forensic’ approach to image, landscape, politics and utopias.
