Apümngeiñ (We Were Annihilated)

2015

Installation: Resin, black glitter, elastic and synthetic hair, 500×40 centimeters.

“Apümngeiñ” is an installation that consists of 5 resin black horses with synthetic hair standing on the ground forming the phrase “Apümngeiñ”.

The horse refers to the powerful image the introduction of this animal to the continent meant to the indigenous people of Latin America, and, therefore, to the colony. The black and straight hair tries to represent the indigenous hair.

This installation present black horses stepping on their hair. This play on words refers to the popular idiom “to step on your own tail”, which can be translated as “to hurt yourself without noticing or to err without noticing”.

The phrase over the ground is a compound word that comes from the Mapuzungun: “Apümn”, which is the verb “to annihilate” translated as “geiñ”, which means “towards ourselves”. The phrase would correspond to “we were annihilated” or “we were finished”, being this work, as a whole, a metaphor about the invasion and the extermination of the indigenous people.

Photos: Diego Argote