Installation As part of the exhibition: "Janet Toro. Radical Intimacy. Overflows and Gestures," curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill National
Production: Pamela Fuentes, Alejandra Rivera
Mounting assistance: Adrián Gutierrez, Marcelo Céspedes, Mario Silva
This installation takes the idea from the previous installation, Sacra Fames, from 2010, but transforms it with new elements and meaning. This time, inside a vintage television are marraquetas, Chilean daily bread, used as a popular source of information. A metaphor for false information restricted to neoliberal ideology. Chile ranks third in statistics with an average of six hours of television watching per day, enough time to be exposed to the influence of propaganda and media manipulation.
Regarding information, philosopher Byung-Chul Han, in his book "Infocracia: Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy," tells us on page 81: "Information is additive and cumulative. Truth, on the other hand, is narrative and exclusive." And on page 82: "The crisis of truth is always a crisis of society. Without truth, society disintegrates internally. It is then held together only by external and instrumental economic relations."
Within the installation, an empty chair sits in a brackish space, the floor of which is composed of thick layers of salt, bordered in a circular pattern by white cobblestones.
Salt, a fundamental element for human life, plays an important role in physiological functions. Along with other elements, it conducts electricity. But here, the salt accumulated in this way leads us to a stark reality, a barren, white space that contrasts with the black canvas on the front wall, alluding to another, dark reality, one that doesn't appear in the information broadcast on television—a patterned incongruity where the truth is submerged in economic interests.
There are different historical meanings for salt. Egyptian priests urged people to sprinkle it on cities destroyed by wars and epidemics to ward off demons and evil. Salt also has negative connotations; in biblical writings it says that the wicked: "Let him be given a house in the desert and shelter in a salty land" (Job, 39, 6).
