MÜRKE KO (2016)

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“Mürke ko” or ‘willpüd’, translated into Spanish, is the mixture of mürke (toasted flour) and ko (water), “Aguita con harina”, which is a term applied in the Mapuche culture to refer to the mixture, the hybrid or lacking in racial purity.

Installation

Mürke ko (Water with toasted wheat flour)

2016

Installation: Resin, synthetic hair and soil. 5×5 meters.

The work consists in a scale piece of the author made with soil and resin and a set of synthetic hair disposed in a circle in the gallery’s floor. “Mürke ko” or “willpüd”, translated to English, is the mixture between the “mürke” (toasted wheat flour) and “ko” (water). “Water with flour” is a concept applied in the Mapuche culture to refer to the mixture, the hybrid or something that lacks racial pureness. This word is also associated to the “champurriadas” identities (identities of mixed-races) in the Chilean territory, territory that although having indigenous ancestry, does not recognize those identities as pure or part of the official Chilean or Mapuche culture. Those identities are outside, in crisis and inhabiting a liminal space.

The shown figure in the work recounts an immobile subject, simulating a “contemporary” mummy built from soil and resin, that upside down grows hair repeating and giving shape in the floor to many versions in Spanish and Mapuzungun of what the word “champurriado” means. For the Mapuche world view, the hair refers an extension of the energy and the thoughts. The length and the color relate a cultural identity in which “the Mapuche must wear their hair long”, according to a prejudice on how must a subject from this culture be. This seeks to question the existence of an identity that must obey a racial pureness or define itself under a certain binary parameter: Chilean or Mapuche. Questioning the homogeneity of identities within that context. On the other hand, there is the tension of the used materials: soil, a living material encapsulated by the resin and the synthetic hair, simulating a link between that that never rots or stops growing: the human hair.

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