Juegos Nocturnos (2024)
Juegos Nocturnos (Night Games) was an exhibition held in March 2024 at the independent space 550 in Santiago. It marked the starting point for a broader project that would unfold over the course of the year. Conceived as an intimate and experimental prelude, the exhibition brought together five paintings in glazed ceramic and encaustic on wood, all inspired by the figure of the jellyfish.
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For some time, I’ve been drawn to jellyfish—not only for their floating, luminous, and ambiguous forms, but for what they symbolize: ancient organisms, brainless and boneless, that have survived for millions of years. We still don’t quite understand their purpose, yet they persist, reminding us that other ways of living are possible. In this exhibition, jellyfish appeared as nocturnal images—soft, abstract, tactile forms presented in a dark, suggestive atmosphere, inviting sensory exploration untethered from the supremacy of intellect.
I wanted the exhibition to be activated as a celebration. That night, in a friend’s workshop, we shared food, music, and conversation around the works. The event coincided with the end of summer, and that convergence of season, art, and gathering allowed me to propose another kind of symbolic circulation: more collective, more affective, more free. The sale of these artworks also launched an experimental model—an economy of art grounded in trust, resource redistribution, and the creation of symbolic value.
All the funds raised in this first stage were directed to the next action: the submersion of a ceramic reef—a work for fish—off the coast of Las Cruces, created in collaboration with marine biologist Alejandro Pérez (ECIM UC). The third and final stage would culminate at the end of the year with the creation of In the Medusa’s Tent, a traveling structure that would visit coastal sites as an open classroom, inviting communities to reflect on water, territory, and sensitive ways of inhabiting the world.
In retrospect, Juegos Nocturnos was not just an exhibition. It was a staging of the desire to transform artistic practice into a system of vital exchanges—where art is not an end object, but a means of building shared meaning. In the darkness of that night, with the jellyfish quietly glowing in the room, a game began that is still in motion.
