/ Southern Oscillations
/Kern Fragen, Group exhibition at Kiezkapelle, Berlin 2026
/ Southern Oscillations
/Kern Fragen, Group exhibition at Kiezkapelle, Berlin 2026
/Southern Oscillations, Kiezkapelle Berlin, 2026/
Southerns Oscillations
/Text by Andrés González Vidales/
The surface of the Atacama Desert is ephemerally transformed into endless patches of electric purple, punctuated by yellow and white. In this surreal landscape, endemic species are in a race against time-being pollinated and sowing latent life in the midst of absolute aridity. However, this vision is a contradiction. More than an anomaly, the desert bloom is the manifestation of what the Andean worldview understands as complementary opposites: forces in tension that do not seek to cancel each other out, but rather to generate stability through their friction. Under the gaze of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, this phenomenon is recognized as Ch'ixi: a ‘vibrant gray’ of mestizaje where the local and the foreign, the grave and the sprout, or the miner and the mountain, coexist without completely merging. This mixture is not a passive middle ground, but a space of resistance and meaning that allows inhabitants to interpret the cycles of the Pacific not as chaos, but as a living narrative of their own hybrid identity.
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Southerns Oscillations
/Text by Andrés González Vidales/
The surface of the Atacama Desert is ephemerally transformed into endless patches of electric purple, punctuated by yellow and white. In this surreal landscape, endemic species are in a race against time-being pollinated and sowing latent life in the midst of absolute aridity. However, this vision is a contradiction. More than an anomaly, the desert bloom is the manifestation of what the Andean worldview understands as complementary opposites: forces in tension that do not seek to cancel each other out, but rather to generate stability through their friction. Under the gaze of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, this phenomenon is recognized as Ch'ixi: a ‘vibrant gray’ of mestizaje where the local and the foreign, the grave and the sprout, or the miner and the mountain, coexist without completely merging. This mixture is not a passive middle ground, but a space of resistance and meaning that allows inhabitants to interpret the cycles of the Pacific not as chaos, but as a living narrative of their own hybrid identity.
/Copper Añañucas - Southern Oscillations, Kiezkapelle Berlin, 2026/
The geography of northern Chile is extreme; therefore, this phenomenon responds to a chain of preconditions that only in synchrony can achieve this specific result. Southern Oscillations presents an array of stories, legends, and science that together make such an unusual landscape overflow with meaning. From the myth of Añañuca -the young woman whose grave bloomed red after waiting for a lost love- comes the name of the flowers that sprout sporadically in the Atacama. Added to this are later accounts of apparitions that syncretically blend local and Christian elements. All these narrative dimensions complement and co-evolve so that the environment responds to a specific sociocultural expectation.
Currently, the desert bloom is explained by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This process occurs when equatorial winds weaken, allowing warm waters from the north to displace the Antarctic Humboldt Current southward. This thermal shift alters global meteorology and bathes the Chilean coast with unexpected rains, awakening latent life in one of the most arid regions on Earth. Because these cycles of climatic intensification often manifested near Christmas, local fishermen named the phenomenon “El Niño” -in reference to the Christ Child- demonstrating how religious devotion filters even into today’s technical language. However, long before this Christian interpretation, Andean cultures utilized their own oracles: for them, the announcement of change came with the appearance of Spondylus, a tropical mollusk whose presence on southern coasts predicted the arrival of rains.
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The geography of northern Chile is extreme; therefore, this phenomenon responds to a chain of preconditions that only in synchrony can achieve this specific result. Southern Oscillations presents an array of stories, legends, and science that together make such an unusual landscape overflow with meaning. From the myth of Añañuca -the young woman whose grave bloomed red after waiting for a lost love- comes the name of the flowers that sprout sporadically in the Atacama. Added to this are later accounts of apparitions that syncretically blend local and Christian elements. All these narrative dimensions complement and co-evolve so that the environment responds to a specific sociocultural expectation.
Currently, the desert bloom is explained by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This process occurs when equatorial winds weaken, allowing warm waters from the north to displace the Antarctic Humboldt Current southward. This thermal shift alters global meteorology and bathes the Chilean coast with unexpected rains, awakening latent life in one of the most arid regions on Earth. Because these cycles of climatic intensification often manifested near Christmas, local fishermen named the phenomenon “El Niño” -in reference to the Christ Child- demonstrating how religious devotion filters even into today’s technical language. However, long before this Christian interpretation, Andean cultures utilized their own oracles: for them, the announcement of change came with the appearance of Spondylus, a tropical mollusk whose presence on southern coasts predicted the arrival of rains.
/El Niño and Spondylus - Southern Oscillations, Kiezkapelle Berlin, 2026/
Only under the influence of El Niño do the seas reach the temperature necessary for Spondylus to travel south of the Equator. For the Andean world, this ‘divine message’ was ambivalent: while it brought destructive rains and vulnerability, it was also interpreted as a process of reordering through chaos. The bright red shell, of immense cultural value, was not only an economic treasure but a receptacle of hydraulic power and fertility. In times of drought, it was pulverized as an offering to invoke rain, symbolizing the capacity of oceanic waters to fecundate the earth. It is precisely this life-giving power that allows us to understand how nature and divinity merge into a single feminine identity.
With the arrival of the Spanish and Catholicism, the Atacama Desert adopted a new reading. The rains would no longer respond to the gods hungry for precious shells; instead, a Marian invocation would take on the role of intercessor for water. It is no coincidence that the Virgin of Candelaria manifested in a lithic format precisely in the Atacama Highlands, the same geographical axis through which Spanish expeditions penetrated to ‘discover’ Chile. The figure was found by the arriero (traditional mule driver) Mariano Caro Inca near the Maricunga Salt Flat, in the vicinity of the Paso de San Francisco. This mountain pass, leading directly to Copiapó -where her sanctuary stands today- links the origin of the Christian faith in the region with the route that forever altered the political and spiritual order of Chile.
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Only under the influence of El Niño do the seas reach the temperature necessary for Spondylus to travel south of the Equator. For the Andean world, this ‘divine message’ was ambivalent: while it brought destructive rains and vulnerability, it was also interpreted as a process of reordering through chaos. The bright red shell, of immense cultural value, was not only an economic treasure but a receptacle of hydraulic power and fertility. In times of drought, it was pulverized as an offering to invoke rain, symbolizing the capacity of oceanic waters to fecundate the earth. It is precisely this life-giving power that allows us to understand how nature and divinity merge into a single feminine identity.
With the arrival of the Spanish and Catholicism, the Atacama Desert adopted a new reading. The rains would no longer respond to the gods hungry for precious shells; instead, a Marian invocation would take on the role of intercessor for water. It is no coincidence that the Virgin of Candelaria manifested in a lithic format precisely in the Atacama Highlands, the same geographical axis through which Spanish expeditions penetrated to ‘discover’ Chile. The figure was found by the arriero (traditional mule driver) Mariano Caro Inca near the Maricunga Salt Flat, in the vicinity of the Paso de San Francisco. This mountain pass, leading directly to Copiapó -where her sanctuary stands today- links the origin of the Christian faith in the region with the route that forever altered the political and spiritual order of Chile.
/Virgen de la Candelaria - Southern Oscillations, Kiezkapelle Berlin, 2026/
The Virgin of Candelaria stands as a true mestizo semiotic creation: her discovery buried underground and her iconic triangular composition reveal her as a ‘mother-mountain,’ a representation of Pachamama protecting miners in the bowels of the earth. This thirst for protection in an extreme ecosystem forces a semantic renewal of the territory in each cycle, resorting to the sacred even to name science, as with ‘El Niño.’ The landscape is constantly renewed through myth, closing the circle with the story of the miner who, following the trail of the Añañuca, disappeared into the immensity of the mountain -the same mountain that today, under the mantle of the Virgin, continues to guard the treasures and flowers sprouting from his grave.
This project evidences that landscape is, by definition, the cultural construction of a territory; a subjective view where geography becomes a collection of interpretations. In this space, the local and the introduced converge in the same archetypes: the annunciation of the phenomenon -whether by Spondylus or El Niño- and the figure of a protective, life-giving mother where Pachamama and the Virgin merge. At these intersections, a third, mestizo ontology emerges, one that resorts to poetry to inhabit chaos.
The Virgin of Candelaria stands as a true mestizo semiotic creation: her discovery buried underground and her iconic triangular composition reveal her as a ‘mother-mountain,’ a representation of Pachamama protecting miners in the bowels of the earth. This thirst for protection in an extreme ecosystem forces a semantic renewal of the territory in each cycle, resorting to the sacred even to name science, as with ‘El Niño.’ The landscape is constantly renewed through myth, closing the circle with the story of the miner who, following the trail of the Añañuca, disappeared into the immensity of the mountain -the same mountain that today, under the mantle of the Virgin, continues to guard the treasures and flowers sprouting from his grave.
This project evidences that landscape is, by definition, the cultural construction of a territory; a subjective view where geography becomes a collection of interpretations. In this space, the local and the introduced converge in the same archetypes: the annunciation of the phenomenon -whether by Spondylus or El Niño- and the figure of a protective, life-giving mother where Pachamama and the Virgin merge. At these intersections, a third, mestizo ontology emerges, one that resorts to poetry to inhabit chaos.
/Altar - Southern Oscillations, Kiezkapelle Berlin, 2026/
Southern Oscillations is presented in a deconsecrated church in Berlin. The former altar serves as a platform upon which the Mother-Mountain rises. At her feet, the Spondylus and the Child are both culprits and witnesses to the blooming of copper and iron. The flower field sprouts from the place where coffins were once presented in the chapel, a nod to the Añañuca. Through these references, the spiritual anatomy of the desert is revealed to the viewer./
Southern Oscillations is presented in a deconsecrated church in Berlin. The former altar serves as a platform upon which the Mother-Mountain rises. At her feet, the Spondylus and the Child are both culprits and witnesses to the blooming of copper and iron. The flower field sprouts from the place where coffins were once presented in the chapel, a nod to the Añañuca. Through these references, the spiritual anatomy of the desert is revealed to the viewer./
/Southern Oscillations, Kiezkapelle Berlin, 2026/
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/Bloomed desert 2017
Atacama, Chile/
/Bloomed desert 2017 Atacama, Chile/
