Strange postcards:
Trafixxx
By Elisa Clark, from Chile
Santiago Centro-Downtown: San Isidro Street. You have to walk by big old houses, old neighbors and the new ones, local and immigrants from nearby countries, sitting on the thresholds in the sun. Like them, you watch how some of the old houses are being torn down, before getting to a corner full of graffiti, far away from commercial galleries. Young people go back and forth across the street carrying bottles of beer. There are art installations, paintings and more graffiti inside. The lady in pajamas lives next door. Djs’ music, street actions, more and more local people coming into the space to share a glass of wine while looking at artwork, maybe for the first time. Some strangers arrive incognito: like Rodney Palmer, an English art historian who bought some graffiti paintings and later wrote about the gallery, and like myself; arriving one evening to have a beer. The flow was so natural (the neighbors watching us at the window, the old lady walking to the deli in her pajamas), that I forgot a little about myself, about rules and maybe about courtesy, and I lay against a volcano that had feet; it was beautiful I must say. Someone touched my shoulder and told me not to lie there. Then I moved to the wall but it also had shoes and legs. I was attracted to the idea of sitting on the grass around a tree…in the middle of the room; but two men were watering it and I understood. At the end I understood: a collective of people tries to sprout their points of view, using any wall, any corner, and the whole city if necessary, just to say” Here we are. This is what we have to tell”
Trafix is a platform for a gallery on movement representing 20 artists and supported by a team of six people. The space is self-financed through the personal work of the board members, fellowships and the sale of art pieces. The exhibition on course during my visit was I am naturaleza (I am nature), by Javier González and Jaime Nun. At this moment they are moving to another house.
