By: Vicente González Mimica
Curated by: Fabian Goncalvez
Presented by: AMA | Art Museum of the Americas

The artist presents black-and-white portraits from two cities in the south of Chile. Like in the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities, one city (London) is described as law-abiding and orderly— analogous to how the artist presents Punta Arenas—and is contrasted with a largely politically agitated city (Paris), which is how González sees Valparaíso. As the artist describes: “The city is violent to me at first sight, perhaps with the character of who has made himself. It grows every day like the jungle that penetrates its streams in all the hills that make it up to reach the sea. It is not planned, it only occupies the spaces left by nature, like plants in an abandoned garden.”

In González’s Liceo series, he celebrates the individual achievements of each student, while seeing the fruits of hard work of families, teachers, and friends. They have been suspended in a time defining adolescence and hope. These students’ portraits in school uniforms, in long Liceo hallways and in workshops wearing trade uniforms, is reminiscent of a hopeful past. It is as if González were evoking the ancestors who arrived to these shores to fulfill dreams and prosper. As Alfred Doblin wrote on August Sanders’ portraits of German people: they are a maximized expression of the combined efforts of a social class, where the greatest achievement is the taming of individuality. He adds that it was their desire to succeed that brought them to this point, and that belonging to this place ultimately held them back as people.