The International Museum of Resistance exhibition in 1978 originated in solidarity with Chile – dictator Augusto Pinochet’s violence against political opponents aroused disgust and laid the foundation for an international solidarity movement, also within the field of art. Many political refugees came to Sweden because of the violence and persecution in their home country, and several of them have made a strong contribution to Swedish social and cultural life. Rolando Peréz participated in the exhibition in 1978, he came to Södertälje after the coup. Rolando Peréz has been shown in exhibitions many times and is well known to the Södertälje audience. He has worked as an artist and teacher for generations of children and adults to whom he generously shared his artistry. The installation he shows in this exhibition is a world where everyone has a place and can play, even we as visitors are attracted by the imaginative figures. Who are they? Flea market people? Materials and expressions have their origins in folk art, but the details are unexpected: ladles, bells, clogs, tools. Rolando Peréz also participated in the International Museum of Resistance 1978 – 2020 almost 50 years after the first Museum of Resistance, where Södertälje konsthall dug deep into the archive- and in this follow-up exhibition Cristian Quintero Soto also participated with a photographic work that is the basis of his artwork in this exhibition. Before the 50th anniversary of the coup on September 11, 2023, Cristian Quinteros Soto returned to Chile. Hernán Soto Gálvez, Cristian’s grandfather, disappeared in 1977 during the dictatorship in Chile. His grandmother Graciela Salinas, searched for him all over the world. In 1989, the dictatorship ended, but the maternal grandfather was still missing. From his trip home to Väsby outside Stockholm, in the fall, Cristian Quinteros Soto had material for a film in which he reunites his grandparents in a beautiful dreamlike installation that is presented in the space.

Canto General is a lended title for the exhibition from a suite of poems by the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. Neruda strives to depict the entire life, culture and history of the Spanish American world from pre-Columbian times to the present in this magnificent work. Thea Olivares Widerström is currently a student at Konstfack – University of Arts, Craft and Design, and shows paintings in the exhibition. The paintings here are an attempt to let go of thought and let the body act with the brush as a framework – as we touch something holy and sacred. Camila Manuelsdotter Pino works by intertwining different mediums to portray an in-betweenness of being Latina and Swedish. She also has an interest in the power words possess and in the hidden stories we are surrounded with. In the work Thank you to my present immigrant father, Camila Manuelsdotter Pino shows how words easily displace content and become important to manifest. The work is part of Camila Manuelsdotter Pino’s search for Latin America in Sweden.

Maja-Lena Molin, Artistic Director Södertälje konsthall

Photos by Fredrik Sederholm
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Picture: From Video Chile 1973-2023