El giro conceptual y procesual de la fotografía en Valparaíso durante la década de los noventa

Abstract

This article offers a critical review of the Gestuario Mecánico collective, active in Valparaíso during the 1990s and composed of artists who employed photography as part of a conceptual and experimental inquiry, in a period marked by Chile's democratic transition. The study is situated at the intersection of contemporary art, political memory, and visual displacements, focusing on how the collective, trained at the University of Playa Ancha, introduced a processual and conceptual approach to photography, in dialogue and tension with the prevailing notions of documentary, record, and representation dominant in the 1980s. Through an analysis of their practices, exhibitions, discourses, and formal strategies, the article examines the elements that configure a visual proposal that disrupts the national photographic canon, including monumental formats, the use of the body and installation, and the articulation of technique, concept, and territory. The article seeks to bring visibility to a body of work omitted by hegemonic narratives of Chilean art, and to contribute to the construction of a situated history of visual practices in regional contexts—particularly in a Valparaíso marked by ruin, institutional marginality, and photographic experimentation during the 1990s.