{"id":8271,"date":"2026-10-01T14:17:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T17:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/?post_type=texto&#038;p=8271"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:17:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T17:17:34","slug":"the-world-of-objects-a-shared-domestic-map-between-wiki-pirela-and-armando-reveron","status":"publish","type":"texto","link":"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/en\/text\/the-world-of-objects-a-shared-domestic-map-between-wiki-pirela-and-armando-reveron\/","title":{"rendered":"The World of Objects: A Shared Domestic Map Between Wiki Pirela and Armando Rever\u00f3n"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is Santiago at the turn of the 20th century. In 1930, the Chilean writer Rosamel del Valle (1901\u20131965) wrote the book <em>Eva y la fuga<\/em>. My dear friend Ignace della Faille had already recommended some of this author\u2019s works to me, and some time later, this unusual copy found its way into my hands. It was a true testimonial account of early-20th-century Santiago or, as literary critic Anna Balakian puts it, \u201ca surrealist cartography of 1930s Santiago\u201d or \u201ca Rosamelian topography resembling Santiago\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-1\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"1\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-1\">1<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"1\">Rosamel del Valle, <em>Eva y la Fuga<\/em>, Santiago, Ediciones La Pollera, 2017, pp. 7\u20138.<\/span>. To my surprise, the book was first published as late as 1970\u2014not in Chile but in Venezuela, specifically in the city of Caracas by the Monte \u00c1vila publishing house. The Chilean poet and diplomat Humberto D\u00edaz Casanueva was in that city around 1938 on a university mission and, from there, corresponded with Rosamel del Valle, who sent him a draft of this manuscript. A few years later, Rosamel passed away, and his wife, as his executor, gave the go-ahead for its posthumous publication. It wasn\u2019t until 2017 that Editorial La Pollera published this book for the first time in Santiago, Chile\u201487 years after it was written in that very city.<\/p>\n<p>Rosamel del Valle\u2014the pen name of Mois\u00e9s Filadelfio Guti\u00e9rrez\u2014always felt a strong inclination toward surrealism, and this is evident throughout these pages in the character of Eva, one of the book\u2019s protagonists. The author describes her as \u201cthe radiance of a long-lived day,\u201d a presence that appears and vanishes, drawing the narrator into a sensory whirlwind in early-20th-century Santiago. Eva moves through anecdotes at the foot of Santa Luc\u00eda Hill, in Santiago\u2019s now-defunct Luna Park, the Plaza de Armas, Merced Street, and among the narrator\u2019s friends. Thus, as Rosamel makes his way through Santiago, he gradually reveals a map of the city to the reader. Among the Santiago itineraries, Ignacio Brandez also stands out\u2014a bearded man whose presence amazes the narrator and leads him to reflect, through imagery and beauty, on the domestic sphere as a refuge from the world: a space where we create another intimate microcosm, seemingly lifeless at first glance, that accompanies us and, at other times, spurns us. About his dear friend Brandez, he writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cSometimes I see him enter my room, and his little beard obscures the world for a moment, only to wash it away and let me see it again, now transformed. Around him, I have encountered seaweed swaying in the water, which is like a dream\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-2\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"2\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-2\">2<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"2\">Ib\u00edd, p.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Following that passage, the narrator offers the following reflection on the <em>World of Objects<\/em>\u2014a subject that has been deeply moving me for several months now and which I aim to shed light on in this essay, using the following quote as my starting point:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201c(&#8230;) Thanks to its magic, I have been able to penetrate the secret transformation of objects\u2014those that live, like us, in a space where they become honorable beings, where they greet one another, sit down, and converse. I have seen them stretch their legs by the fire, curl them up, spread them apart, and then begin to tell stories of the human beings they serve, whom they care for, and whom they love or despise. For them, the causes are the same, the effects identical, as if in a state of constant despair. One day a man or a woman arrives, and upon seeing them there\u2014always so calm in their static existence\u2014they recover something of what they have lost within themselves and gaze at them, dust them off, caress them, move them to a new spot, and lead them to believe that only they await something akin to a kind of invulnerable loyalty. It is love. Another day, a man or a woman suddenly approaches them, and in their sweet solitude they see that the animated world is far too hostile to them; that the hostile gaze pursues them, reflected in everything; that it is impossible to keep one\u2019s thoughts from being witnessed; that still life, too, rages against them with its own anguish. So they are thrown into the back of closets, into drawers, into corners, or smashed against the floor. And that, too, is love. Only they know that human beings are weak, fickle, small, and useless. And no one dares to abandon them for good\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-3\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"3\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-3\">3<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"3\">Ib\u00edd, p.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>This passage resonated deeply within me, both for its poetic prose and for the agency it ascribes to objects\u2014to the universe of objects we keep, create, and collect\u2014to the liveliness and companionship they offer us, and to the way we form powerful bonds with them throughout our lives. This <em>Rosamelian topography<\/em>, where still life and the inert come to life to shield us from a hostile world, served as an unexpected lens for me and helped me realize that this secret transformation was not, in reality, limited to literary imagination in the cold Santiago of the 1930s, but was rather a genuine act of survival in the face of the World. In an effort to unravel this matter of \u201cObjectuality,\u201d my writing builds a bridge to the Caribbean to explore two Venezuelan artists born nearly a century apart: Wiki Pirela (Caracas, 1992) and Armando Rever\u00f3n (Caracas, 1889\u20131954). Curiously, the latter brought this very \u201cWorld of Objects\u201d to life with his own hands on the coasts of Venezuela at the very same time that Rosamel del Valle was writing about it in the south of the continent. Then, closing a geographical and temporal arc, Wiki Pirela reincarnates this creative spirit in the 21st century, constructing his own \u201cWorld of Objects\u201d in an attempt to bring his home on the \u201cLa Unidad\u201d hill in Caracas back to Santiago, Chile.<\/p>\n<p>With these <em>Rosamelian<\/em> resonances as my compass, the dialogue I seek to establish thus charts a journey that brings these two artists together, despite the historical distances between them. To unravel this path, I first focus on the <em>\u201cDesire for Home<\/em>,\u201d briefly delving into the transitional and reparative function that psychoanalysis assigns to Objects. Next, I follow the trail of collecting\u2014whose resonance I find in the American verb <em>pepenar<\/em>\u2014through Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s <em>The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction<\/em>, observing how Armando Rever\u00f3n and Wiki Pirela salvage and work with their materials. This leads me, later on, to delve deeper into the practice of assemblage and the term <em>\u201cbricolage\u201d <\/em>proposed by Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, which will allow us to understand the magical component that emerges in the act of creating Objects and endowing them with utility, memory, and the power of contemplation\u2014as is the case with Rever\u00f3n\u2019s <em>Castillete <\/em>on the coast of Macuto, Venezuela, and in Wiki Pirela\u2019s House-Studio in the Cumming neighborhood of Santiago. To ground this idea in our own context, I also draw on the reflections developed by Valentina Montero in her essay <em>Hechizos para salvar el mundo, <\/em>a key text for translating the notion of <em>bricolage <\/em>into a more familiar, specifically Latin American, framework. Finally, to conclude this essay, I pause to consider a beautiful contemporary coincidence that seems to bridge the historical distance separating Rever\u00f3n and Pirela: in 2026, the works of both artists will be exhibited in Caracas. In a way, these \u201cObjects\u201d have managed to come together just a few blocks apart, in the very city where their creators were born.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Part One. The Desire for Home<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe light never went away\u2014at least in the water, it never went away (&#8230;) the sun was beautiful, and the fish would come up to the shore to find you,\u201d recalls my grandmother Margris about her days strolling through the coastal town of Macuto, in La Guaira state. Exiled in Santiago, Chile, for eight years now, neither she nor I have been able to return to the Caribbean\u2019s luminescence, to our cuisine, to our colors, or to our temperatures and that distinctive humidity. This essay began innocently as an attempt to reconnect with the Caribbean, inspired by the writings of Rosamel del Valle, viewed through the lens of one of my recent pursuits here in Chile: aesthetic research. As I mentioned, this author\u2019s work prompted me to delve into a reflection on Objects that straddle the boundary between the inanimate and the living\u2014those we create to accompany us as we inhabit the world, with which we converse, and which, deep down, also help us build a <em>home.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Borrowing from psychoanalysis the concept of <em>the transitional object <\/em>developed by Donald Winnicott (and its reparative function), we can understand that our relationship with matter plays a fundamental role in human development and in the process of personal individuation. Indeed, it is through these objects that we are able to cope with the first instance of maternal \u201cabandonment.\u201d When the mother leaves the baby for the first time, the first thing the baby does\u2014to avoid sinking into tears and the trauma caused by the separation\u2014is to cling to an object in search of comfort: the baby grabs a blanket, a stuffed animal, or whatever is at hand, creating a symbolic bond with this material object to help cope with the separation. Thus, the Object allows, in the first instance, not only to prevent a rupture in the infant\u2019s psyche but also to rework an experience based on something tangible and alive.<\/p>\n<p>In a private conversation, the critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado cautioned me against the romanticism of my desire to engage with the Caribbean through this essay, weaving together Winnicott\u2019s theory with my own experience as a migrant. According to him, I\u2014like the infant separated from its mother, and perhaps like the artists I intend to study\u2014am also creating, through this writing, an Object to cope with the trauma of separation from my homeland. In my dreams, I see myself being swept away by the strong southern winds that carry me across the seas and gently wash my body ashore on the Caribbean coast. Faced with the impossibility of making that journey physically, I clung to the material works of Wiki Pirela and Armando Rever\u00f3n to feel closer to the Caribbean\u2014to its light, scent, sound, and accent.<\/p>\n<p>There is, then, a need to mobilize certain feelings and reflections to the point of giving them a physical existence. So that they are not merely pulsing within us, we turn them outward through matter. Before the Object emerges, there is, therefore, a mobilizing force that I would like to call <em>Desire for Home \u2014<\/em>an expression I borrow from Justo Pastor Mellado\u2019s essay titled <em>El deseo de casa: El lugar de Armando Rever\u00f3n en las inflexiones metodol\u00f3gicas habilitadas por las curator\u00edas de infraestructura <\/em>(\u201cThe Desire for Home: Armando Rever\u00f3n\u2019s Place in the Methodological Inflections Enabled by Infrastructure Curatorships\u201d). It is that which drives us to give expression to what we feel and to shape it into physical forms, and which also brings to life the longing to build a refuge from the world\u2014a place that shelters us. I believe that both Rever\u00f3n and Wiki Pirela are driven by this impulse, creating their own Objectual World through domestic attire that protects them.<\/p>\n<p>In Rever\u00f3n\u2019s specific case, this refuge of <em>Objectualities <\/em>does not actually stem from forced banishment, but rather from a radical and voluntary exile. Born in Caracas in 1889 into a well-to-do family in rural Venezuela\u2014a country still recovering from the wars of independence and whose elite had their sights set on Europe\u2014the artist studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Caracas and in 1908 traveled to Spain, where he was influenced by painters such as Francisco de Goya and Ignacio Zuloaga. Like many of his peers, he returned to Caracas as a sort of intellectual ambassador for Spanish art, befriending Romanian and Russian painters such as Samys M\u00fctzner and Nicol\u00e1s Ferdinandov, who introduced him to the Impressionist movement. However, a few years later, Rever\u00f3n grew weary of this life and undertook a second migration, this time within Venezuela. It was then that he settled in Macuto, on the Caribbean coast, where he began building with his own hands a house he named <em>El Castillete <\/em>(\u201cThe Castle\u201d) (Fig. 1), which he filled with objects he had also crafted himself. There he would live with Juanita, a young mestizo woman\u2014it is worth noting that Venezuelan society was still divided by caste\u2014whom he met at the La Guaira Carnival, a fact that caused quite a stir in the intellectual circles of the time. He would live there until the end of his days, devoting himself to painting and immortalizing the characteristic light of the Caribbean coast on his canvases. Alfredo Boulton, an art critic and friend of the artist, described it during one of his visits:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cThe center of the lot was occupied by a spacious, tall thatched hut covered with palm leaves. The walls were made of cane fences and large hemp-woven curtains that served to filter the light. The floor was made of packed earth and was very clean. The entire structure was built from wood cut from nearby forests. [&#8230;] Pieces of tulle hung from the beams, and light filtered through the slits in what he called \u2018the arbor.\u2019 On one side was the platform where the models posed reclining on multicolored cushions stuffed with dry leaves. Light entered through a circular opening separating the ceiling from the partition walls; this opening was covered with a fisherman\u2019s chinchorro net. On that platform, Rever\u00f3n prepared the setting where the figures would rest. He cut bouquets of onoto, palm leaves, and lechoza leaves, which he placed around the subject to serve as chromatic references [&#8230;]\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-4\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"4\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-4\">4<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"4\">Alfredo Boulton, <em>La Obra de Armando Rever\u00f3n<\/em>. Caracas, Fundaci\u00f3n Neumann, 1966, pp 52-56. Cited in: Jens Andermann, \u201cRever\u00f3n: El Paisaje Evanescente\u201d, in<em> Los m\u00e1rgenes, las orillas, los bordes.\u00a0 T\u00f3picos del Seminario<\/em>, 29, Zurich, 2013, p.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8281\" style=\"width: 470px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8281\" class=\"wp-image-8281 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Fig.-1-300x204.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"313\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Fig.-1-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Fig.-1-150x102.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Fig.-1.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8281\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Armando Reveron&#8217;s <em>El Castillete<\/em> de, undated.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Absolutely everything in Rever\u00f3n\u2019s<em> Castillete <\/em>was made by his own hands using materials he found: those washed up by the Caribbean Sea and those he himself collected on the shore and in the surrounding area. From the walls and ceilings of the house to the objects inside, which included masks, instruments, crowns, small tables, trunks, chests, candelabras, decorative elements, and other artifacts that we can conceive of as materialized fictions brought to life. Added to all this were the protagonists of some of his portraits, which he created himself by stuffing rags with soft materials. I am referring to the so-called <em>Dolls <\/em>(Fig. 2)<em>, <\/em>a term I cannot help but question when I notice the liveliness they radiated within the space\u2014whether due to their human-scale size, their clothing, or their appearance\u2014which prevent us from viewing them as mere toys or mannequins and clearly transform them into presences that engage in dialogue with the rest of the \u201cObject World\u201d that constituted Rever\u00f3n\u2019s home-castillete-studio and which, I dare say, in some way also resided there.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8282\" style=\"width: 434px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8282\" class=\"wp-image-8282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/images-300x232.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"424\" height=\"328\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/images-300x232.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/images-150x116.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/images.jpg 564w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8282\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2. Armando Rever\u00f3n, <em>Dolls<\/em>, undated.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In 2001, Justo Pastor Mellado attended the exhibition <em>El lugar de los objetos <\/em>at the National Art Gallery in Caracas, one of the few shows held at the time that, rather than focusing on Rever\u00f3n\u2019s paintings, centered on the objects the artist created during his years at <em>El Castillete. <\/em>As a result of this experience, the critic also debated the use of the label <em>\u201cMu\u00f1ecas\u201d <\/em>and wrote the essay cited above, which he presented at a symposium held at the same gallery. Mellado recalls that the museum space was completely transformed for this exhibition, transporting the viewer into Rever\u00f3n\u2019s intimate space. All the \u201cObjects\u201d from inside his home were on display there, and the dolls hung from the ceiling, just as the artist had arranged them at <em>El Castillete, <\/em>as can be seen in the 1952 short film by Venezuelan director and screenwriter Margot Benacerraf (Fig. 3). In addition, a grand dinner inspired by the cuisine of Macuto in the 1950s was held as part of the exhibition\u2014a true spectacle of flavors that included fried fish, tostones, and chipichipi broth.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8277\" style=\"width: 464px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8277\" class=\"wp-image-8277\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-300x213.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"454\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-300x213.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-1024x728.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-150x107.png 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-768x546.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-1536x1091.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-2048x1455.png 2048w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-1689x1200.png 1689w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.00.38-1200x853.png 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 454px) 100vw, 454px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8277\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 3. <em>Dolls <\/em>in Benacerraf&#8217;s short film, 1952<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In his essay, Mellado agrees with the exhibition\u2019s curator, Luis Enrique P\u00e9rez Oramas, that \u201cfor Rever\u00f3n, the house is the foremost of all objects\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-5\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"5\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-5\">5<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"5\">Justo Pastor Mellado, <em>El deseo de casa: El lugar de Armando Rever\u00f3n en las inflexiones metodol\u00f3gicas habilitadas por las curator\u00edas de infraestructura.<\/em> Caracas, Unpublished text, 2001, p. 48.<\/span> . This, according to Mellado, is the diagrammatic condition of the artist\u2019s work, insofar as his desire to establish a refuge from the world was what enabled him to bring his entire body of work to fruition. Here, the critic offers an important caveat: beyond any psychoanalytic interpretation that might be drawn from the schizophrenia with which the painter struggled for many years, it is important to pay attention to the materiality of his work. The material from which his \u201craw\u201d Objects and canvases are made is precisely what illuminates his creative process, for the Objects also produce meaning through the materials and procedures by which they are created:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201c[Rever\u00f3n] conveys meaning through the parodic materiality of his creations, playing down the significance of the studio space itself. Courbet does not go far enough. Neither does Bellmer. His disarticulations stem from a technological model linked to ceramics, polychrome wood, and the imagery of doll-making. Rever\u00f3n belongs to another technological complex; to another material episteme\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-6\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"6\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-6\">6<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"6\">Idem<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>When Mellado mentions that these figures belong to \u201canother material episteme,\u201d he is referring to the fact that they were stuffed with jute, fabric, wire, wick, newspaper, and pigments. This reveals that Rever\u00f3n\u2019s<em> Desire for Home <\/em>was also a reaction, a distancing from the intellectual elite. By erecting a fortress of objects on the seashore, turning his back on the modern city, the artist sought to protect himself from European modernity as a system of tastes, techniques, and customs, and, furthermore, from the rise of oil extractivism at the time. He thus found a refuge to do \u201chis own thing\u201d\u2014his own home, his own castle, his own hideaway from the world: <em>El Castillete. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>This explains why it would be a mistake to classify Rever\u00f3n as a failed Impressionist or even as a Post-Impressionist. He was nothing more and nothing less than a Caribbean man, a Creole who captured on the shores of the Caribbean that characteristic light of that landscape as no other artist or technique could. If there is one word suitable for classifying Rever\u00f3n\u2019s work\u2014irony aside\u2014<em>it<\/em> is <em>\u201cReveronian.\u201d <\/em>Only that term can give a name to the light he captures on the canvas\u2014and which even escapes him\u2014the light that permeates everything with its rays and gradually reveals the pristine sea, and through which the entire imagination of the Caribbean seeps into the artist\u2019s home and into the very materiality of his domestic Objects. Here I am thinking of Jens Andermann\u2019s essay <em>Rever\u00f3n: El Paisaje Evanescente, <\/em>which quite accurately identifies the uniqueness of the artist\u2019s style, noting that his personal quest in self-imposed exile\u2014and in open contrast to his contemporaries\u2014was what allowed him to achieve it:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cBased on some paintings, photographs, and accounts that have survived from that era, this is also the moment when Rever\u00f3n embarks on a curious personal quest\u2014which he seems to have taken much more seriously than his occasional bohemian visitors from Caracas\u2014for an archaic indigenous past, posing himself in a loincloth and armed with spears and arrows, or portraying Juanita dressed as an Indian queen. It is, perhaps, a sort of escape back in time, discarding the Hispanic references of his Caracas period in favor of an imaginary pre-colonial indigenous tradition\u2014an alternative world to the real history of conservative and dictatorial modernization. But it also represents\u2014along with his coastal isolation in Macuto\u2014the conceptual framework that would allow Rever\u00f3n to purge his painting of allegorical elements and Hispanic cultural baggage, moving toward an uninhibited quest to capture the Caribbean landscape and its extreme luminosity with radical literalism\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-7\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"7\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-7\">7<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"7\">Jens Andermann, \u201cRever\u00f3n: El Paisaje Evanescente\u201d, in<em> Los m\u00e1rgenes, las orillas, los bordes.\u00a0 T\u00f3picos del Seminario<\/em>, 29, Zurich, 2013, p. 44.<\/span> .<\/p>\n<p>Rever\u00f3n\u2019s survival depended, then, on that coastal isolation, on the voluntary construction of this anachronistic refuge that distanced him from the elite, from extractivism, and from modernity. But what happens when it is the territory itself that expels you? A century after Rever\u00f3n, that same <em>Desire for Home <\/em>that drives his work takes on new meaning in Wiki Pirela\u2019s practice, set against another context of vulnerability. For her, the refuge is not a stand against modernity, but rather a way of grappling with the experience of exile, the loss of home following migration, and the stereotypes associated with poverty.<\/p>\n<p>Born in 1992\u2014more than 100 years after Rever\u00f3n\u2014Wiki spent her childhood and adolescence on the \u201cLa Unidad\u201d hill in Caracas, a fundamental part of her work today. Driven by creativity, she enrolled in the Fine Arts program at the National Experimental University of the Arts of Venezuela and graduated in 2016, after which she was forced to migrate to Santiago, Chile, the following year due to the political and social situation in her country. In Chile, she continued to develop a body of work deeply connected to the notions of \u201cHome\u201d and \u201cObjects,\u201d managing to establish herself in the local art scene despite having little familiarity with the area, through self-organized workshops and the creation of performances and installations in public spaces that evoke the ideas of home and domestic space, primarily through the use of cardboard. Thus, like Rever\u00f3n, Wiki must also make a home for herself in this new territory\u2014a space from which she reflects and invites us to reflect on diaspora, racism, and xenophobia, but also on community and the practices of care that emerge in the open air, where the body becomes a home.<\/p>\n<p>This sense of urgency to materialize a home in response to the experience of uprooting has resonated strongly within the contemporary art scene. Indeed, Pirela\u2019s<em> Desire for Home <\/em>has expanded through residencies in Chile and Uruguay, and her work has been featured on major international platforms such as the 14th Mercosur Biennial (2025), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Buenos Aires (2023), and the Haus der Architektur in Germany (2024), as well as in solo exhibitions such as <em>La Reina <\/em>(Abra Gallery, Caracas, 2024) and <em>Cascar\u00f3n <\/em>(Patricia Ready Gallery, Santiago, 2023). Even during her recent exhibition at the Il Posto art space (2026), Wiki has consolidated a visual art practice that springs from the very core of her life story. As the theorist Oriana Mej\u00edas Mart\u00ednez describes: \u201cDaughter of Luisa, a native of Caracas, a woman, an artist, a Black woman, a sister, an aunt, a migrant; she is a body, she is a house, she is a body-house, she is a meeting space to discuss sites of enunciation, she is a reflective body, she is a noble smile. Wiki is a torrent of words, of ideas, of concerns\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-8\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"8\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-8\">8<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"8\">Oriana Mej\u00edas Martinez, &#8220;Wiki Pirela: La Reina&#8221;, in <em>Artishock, <\/em>June 19, 2024 [<a href=\"https:\/\/artishockrevista.com\/2024\/06\/19\/wiki-pirela-la-reina\/\">https:\/\/artishockrevista.com\/2024\/06\/19\/wiki-pirela-la-reina\/<\/a>].<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Wiki\u2019s research, as we mentioned, began precisely with the exploration of domestic spaces, taking her own home\u2014number 11 on the \u201cLa Unidad\u201d hill in Caracas\u2014as its core and starting point. With a clear political purpose, this work introduces into this space situations and objects that are not typically intended to exist in an atmosphere marked by violence and conflict. In this regard, the Abracaracas gallery notes that \u201cthe poetry that intervenes within her installations and specific objects functions as a form of resistance to that environment\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-9\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"9\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-9\">9<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"9\"><em>Acto de fe<\/em>, Caracas, Galer\u00eda ABRA, 2026. Exhibition Catalogue [<a href=\"https:\/\/abracaracas.com\/exposicion\/acto-de-fe-wiki-pirela\/\">https:\/\/abracaracas.com\/exposicion\/acto-de-fe-wiki-pirela\/<\/a>]<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Wiki\u2019s house and objects travel with her when she emigrates to Chile, where the need to rebuild the four walls of a home becomes palpable\u2014but not simply as an empty space. For it is also the objects\u2014the paintings, the details, and absolutely everything we accumulate and assemble in life\u2014that make up the <em>home<\/em>, that await us, and that also protect us, as Rosamel del Valle reminds us. To understand what these Objects that protect us are made of, I turn once again to Chilean literature. In her essay \u201cDesecho neobarroco: costra y adornos\u201d Nelly Richard highlights a personal note from Diamela Eltit to Federico Galende in the <em>Revista de Cr\u00edtica Cultural<\/em>, drawing on passages to convince us of the political possibilities inherent in the practice of working with found objects. I find the following quote particularly illuminating because of the spirituality Eltit ascribes to the Objects that no longer serve the productive machine:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cModernity will see the uncomfortable presence of waste triumph all around it\u2014an unexpected accumulation of disused objects and spirits devoid of domestic practicality that will resist being discarded and threaten to burst into the present in order to redeem the memory of a captive temporality\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-10\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"10\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-10\">10<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"10\">Nelly Richard, \u201cDesecho neobarroco: costra y adornos\u201d, in <em>Residuos y met\u00e1foras: ensayos de cr\u00edtica cultural sobre el Chile de la transici\u00f3n<\/em>, Santiago,\u00a0 Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1998, p. 77.<\/span> .<\/p>\n<p>I had the privilege of meeting her at her home here in Santiago. Before reaching her neighborhood, I was enveloped by the gray autumn landscape; it hadn\u2019t rained in Santiago for the first time in a while, and the city was covered in a thick layer of smog that contrasted with the tall, equally gray mountains. I arrived at her all-white building located near the Cumming metro station; however, upon reaching the fifth floor where Wiki lives, it was like stepping into a kind of portal.<\/p>\n<p>We noted earlier that if Rever\u00f3n isolates himself from modernity, from Caracas\u2019s intellectual circle, and from the echoes of European painting\u2014in what critic Marta Traba identifies as a radical act of self-absorption and resistance in the face of a Latin American art obsessed with \u201ckeeping up with the times\u201d\u2014it is to make something greater possible: to turn his eye and hands toward the landscape, to immerse his body in it, and to project that territory onto his canvases and into the entirety of the \u201cObjects\u201d that make up <em>El Castillete. <\/em>Well, the same is true in the case of Wiki Pirela, who lives and works in a house-studio located in the heart of the bustling city, in the Cumming neighborhood of Santiago. It is an apartment on the fifth floor of a building clad in white cement, whose narrow slits barely reveal the mountains of the Andes. I remember the first time I visited it. Before arriving, I was enveloped by the gray landscape of autumn in Santiago, completely shrouded in a thick cloud of smog. However, upon entering Wiki\u2019s home, a sort of portal opened up: her works and parts of her installations then came into view, blending into the domestic space (Fig. 4). They were in the kitchen, on the balcony, on the bathroom floor, and in the bedroom\u2014cardboard pieces painted in vivid hues with phrases written on them. A large shelf filled with scraps and found objects from the artist\u2019s travels coexisted and shaped her world\u2014this object-based universe that is her home. There was, for example, a small stool with an alligator head made of wood and cardboard, and a black radio constructed from the same materials. It\u2019s difficult to adjust one\u2019s gaze to distinguish which objects are fictional and which are real or functional. Just as was the case at <em>El Castillete<\/em>, Wiki blurs the boundaries between what is a work of art and what is an object.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8286\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8286\" class=\"wp-image-8286\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3-150x113.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3-1200x900.jpeg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.08.06-PM-3.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8286\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 4. Wiki Pirela&#8217;s home-studio in Santiago, 2026. Photograph by the author.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Turning our attention briefly back to Rever\u00f3n, I find it particularly relevant to mention here the case of <em>La Pajarera <\/em>(\u201cThe Birdcage\u201d) (undated), an object made of bamboo, rubber-coated wire, thread, pigments, crayon, cardboard, and metal that contained eleven life-size little birds, each with its own feeder (Fig. 5). It was an \u201cObject of Contemplation\u201d that evoked live birds with which Rever\u00f3n likely conversed. Therein lies the fundamental detail: the inanimate began to disappear only at the very moment these \u201cObjects\u201d were treated as living presences. It is precisely at that threshold that the boundaries for classifying them begin to fade.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8284\" style=\"width: 427px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8284\" class=\"wp-image-8284 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Pajarera-300x264.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"417\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Pajarera-300x264.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Pajarera-150x132.png 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Pajarera.png 548w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8284\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 5. Armando Rever\u00f3n, <em>La Pajarera<\/em>, undated<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As we have seen, Rever\u00f3n\u2019s house was almost a museum-like dwelling or, viewed from a contemporary perspective, a large, perennial installation\u2014alive in the sense that it was constantly changing and taking shape over the years. Wiki, perhaps without realizing it, transforms her own refuge into something similar: a livable museum where artworks and household items blend together. She then consciously applies this same logic to her exhibitions, blurring the boundaries between her home and the \u201cbody-houses\u201d that are her installations. Consider, for example, the exhibition <em>Todo cuidado \u00e9 pouco <\/em>(2026). There, the artist presents a video installation titled <em>Relaci\u00f3n Can\u00edbal <\/em>(\u201cCannibal Relationship\u201d) to evoke, once again, a house\u2014for which four walls are not enough; rather, what matters are the objects that inhabit the interior of this space (Fig. 6). Among them we can make out a table, a lamp, a plate of food, a calendar, and a red radio, all made of drawn cardboard. In other words, utilitarian objects that come to life and shed their inert state as they enter into a dialogue with the space, just as happens in the artist\u2019s apartment in the Cumming neighborhood.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8285\" style=\"width: 483px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8285\" class=\"wp-image-8285 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-300x200.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"473\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-150x100.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM-1200x800.jpeg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-05-28-at-1.31.55-PM.jpeg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8285\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 6. Wiki Pirela, <em>Relaci\u00f3n Can\u00edbal<\/em>, 2026<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The curation of this exhibition focused on care work in general, particularly those tasks that become invisible in contemporary society. For this reason, Wiki decided to create a jagged house, reflecting on how homes appear to be a safe place but, at the same time, can be rife with violence and exploitation, especially when it is only one person\u2014the female subject\u2014who takes on the responsibility of keeping the house running, whether by cleaning it, watering the plants, dusting the corners, or feeding and raising the children who live there. Within the house, then, power dynamics also arise\u2014a hunter-prey dynamic that Wiki sought to expose by suggesting that the dwelling also feeds off its inhabitants, even to the point of becoming humanized. In this way, the boundaries between objects, the body, and the house once again become blurred, transforming the latter into a bodily space we can enter.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Desire for Home <\/em>in Wiki, as we have seen, materializes as a refuge from the helplessness caused by migration. A helplessness that, it must be remembered, is not only institutional but brutally material, since it involves the loss of a roof over one\u2019s head, uprooting from the land, and the exposure of one\u2019s roots to the cold. Following the rupture caused by this traumatic event, there arises an urgent need to cling to a restorative Object in order to rework the experience. In this artist\u2019s case, this impulse translates, literally, into the creation of Objects: assembled pieces that speak to the need to <em>be <\/em>and <em>to make <\/em>a Home in the midst of uprooting, which brings us back to what Rosamel del Valle observes:\u00a0 Objects, when we dust them off and move them to a new place, can help us recover something lost within ourselves, demonstrating unconditional loyalty. They thus become accomplices in providing shelter, silent guardians when the animated world feels too hostile to us. Thus, I dare to assert that, in Wiki, just as in Rever\u00f3n, there is a shared domestic map that finds its counterpart in the aesthetic treatment they give to Objects.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Part Two. Contain \u2013 Scavenge \u2013 Bricolaging\u2013 Spell<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To understand the relationship that Armando Rever\u00f3n and Wiki Pirela maintain with matter, some of the theories of the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin may be illuminating. In her essay <em>\u201cThe Theory of the Fiction Bag<\/em>\u201d (1986), Le Guin argues that humanity\u2019s progress does not necessarily stem from the development of military attire, hunting, or violence, but rather from what I would like to call here the <em>\u201cContaining Gesture.\u201d<\/em> It is, in fact, baskets, nets, and vessels that have allowed us to stock up on resources for the future, store seeds, or transport food. It is this gesture of gathering the \u201cremnants of the world\u201d and then preserving them that I wish to highlight here, since both Rever\u00f3n and Wiki work by collecting elements regurgitated by the territory\u2014discarded by the modern city or the Caribbean coast\u2014to safeguard them in a large container: their homes, always driven by the desire to resurrect their existence.<\/p>\n<p>Let us now consider how Wiki and Rever\u00f3n\u2019s hands operate in their artistic production processes, specifically in the initial stage\u2014the act of gathering. To reflect on this practice, Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s documentary <em>The Gleaners and I <\/em>(2000) can be illuminating. In it, the filmmaker travels through cities and countryside in France, observing contemporary <em>glaneurs <\/em>or gleaners: those who collect misshapen potatoes rejected by the market or who salvage objects from the trash to give them a new life. Varda takes the practice of gathering even further and, camera in hand, becomes a gleaner herself, collecting images, patiently approaching people, and capturing narratives that would otherwise be lost.<\/p>\n<p>Now, for the purposes of this essay, we need to ground this concept in the Latin American context. Paradoxically, the key to doing so came from the translation of Varda\u2019s film itself. As I watched it, my attention was drawn to the verb used in the subtitles to translate the act of gleaning to spanish: <em>pepenar<\/em>. To my surprise, the term comes from Nahuatl, a macrolanguage belonging to the Uto-Nahuan language family spoken by various indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America. Its root is <em>pepenan\u00ed<\/em>, which literally means \u201cgatherer.\u201d Far from the traditional image of someone gathering wheat stubble in a French field, a pepenador is someone who rummages through trash or discarded materials in order to recycle or reuse them. This notion, which aligns with the <em>Dictionary of Americanisms <\/em>(ASALE), involves picking something up from the ground, searching through leftovers, and salvaging discarded objects that still retain a purpose, a utility, or a spark of possibility. At the same time, \u201cpepenar\u201d also implies <em>selecting <\/em>from what is scattered about\u2014a nuance that strikes me as revealing when considering the practices of the artists I propose to study. In a conversation with Wiki, we both agreed that \u201ctaste\u201d is not innocent and that all those materials we scavenge from the landscape are chosen by our hands for a reason.\u00a0 The Object Worlds of this artist and of Rever\u00f3n arise strictly from their own inventions and from what they have consciously scavenged. Consider Wiki\u2019s <em>Sewing Machine<\/em>, exhibited in the show <em>La Reina <\/em>(\u201cThe Queen\u201d) (2024) at Galer\u00eda Abra, assembled from wood, cardboard, glue, and tempera (Fig. 7). Or consider Rever\u00f3n\u2019s <em>Caballete con Parasol <\/em>(\u201cEasel with Parasol\u201d) (1928), constructed from linen, burlap, and wood, and his <em>Portapinceles<\/em> (\u201cBrush Holder\u201d) (undated), made of jute, fiber, and thread (Fig. 8).<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8276\" style=\"width: 384px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8276\" class=\"wp-image-8276\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-06-10-a-las-12.22.17-279x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"374\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-06-10-a-las-12.22.17-279x300.png 279w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-06-10-a-las-12.22.17-951x1024.png 951w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-06-10-a-las-12.22.17-139x150.png 139w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-06-10-a-las-12.22.17-768x827.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-06-10-a-las-12.22.17.png 1040w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 374px) 100vw, 374px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8276\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 7. Wiki Pirela, <em>Sewing Machine,<\/em> 2024<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_8275\" style=\"width: 398px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8275\" class=\"wp-image-8275\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/CaballeteConParasol-246x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"388\" height=\"473\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/CaballeteConParasol-246x300.png 246w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/CaballeteConParasol-123x150.png 123w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/CaballeteConParasol.png 724w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8275\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 8. Armando Rever\u00f3n, <em>Caballete con Parasol<\/em>, 1928<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At this point, the concept of <em>bricolage <\/em>emerges as a fundamental notion for understanding the practices of these two artists. The term was coined in 1962 by the Belgian-French anthropologist and philosopher Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss in his book <em>The Savage Mind<\/em>, specifically in its first chapter, \u201cThe Science of the Concrete.\u201d There, the author takes us on a narrative journey to demonstrate that the scientific\/logical thought of the Western world is not, in reality, inferior to the magical\/mythical thought characteristic of the world\u2019s First Nations, such as those of the Americas. While history has sought to downplay these forms of thought, imposing the colonizers\u2019 sciences upon them, in this text the philosopher makes an effort to blur the hierarchies of thought.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding <em>bricolage<\/em>, L\u00e9vi-Strauss argues that the <em>bricoleur<\/em>\u2019s instrumental universe is closed and that his maxim is \u201cto make do with whatever (&#8230;) he has.\u201d <em>Bricolage<\/em>, then, involves working with \u201ca set\u2014at every moment finite\u2014of tools and materials, which are moreover heterogeneous, because the composition of the set is not related to the project at hand [&#8230;] but is rather the contingent result of all the opportunities that have presented themselves to renew or enrich its existence, or to preserve it with the remnants of previous constructions and destructions\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-11\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"11\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-11\">11<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"11\">Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, <em>El pensamiento salvaje<\/em>, M\u00e9xico, Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 1992, p. 37.<\/span>. Both Rever\u00f3n and Wiki put into practice this act of assembling the remnants offered to them by contingency\u2014the former working with \u201cnatural debris\u201d from the Caribbean, and the latter using materials regurgitated by the city, such as cardboard. Moreover, both breathe new life into these materials through assemblages, \u201ctinkering\u201d and enriching their existence to give shape to Objects, which then find a place within their Homes. Once again, it is L\u00e9vi-Strauss who finds the exact words to describe this creative act when speaking of <em>the bricoleur<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cLet us observe him in action: excited by his project, his first practical action is, nevertheless, retrospective: he must turn to an already constituted set, composed of tools and materials; take, or retake, inventory; and finally, and above all, establish a sort of dialogue with it (&#8230;) All these motley objects that make up his treasure trove are interrogated by him in order to understand what each of them might \u2018signify\u2019<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-12\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"12\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-12\">12<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"12\">Ibid., 38.<\/span> .<\/p>\n<p>It is important to remember that what L\u00e9vi-Strauss seeks first and foremost is to equate the magical-mythical act of <em>bricolage <\/em>with scientific thought. Beyond any hierarchy, the author contrasts these two forms of knowledge without finding, in many passages, a common ground, until he finally identifies in the figure of the artist a possibility for an alliance between the two, noting: \u201cArt lies halfway between scientific knowledge and mythical or magical thought; for everyone knows that the artist is, at once, part sage and part bricoleur: using artisanal means, he crafts a material object that is at the same time an object of knowledge\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-13\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"13\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-13\">13<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"13\">Ibid., p. 44.<\/span> .From this perspective, it is possible to argue that Pirela and Rever\u00f3n are not mere <em>bricoleurs<\/em>; in every piece they create, these artists weave together utility, materiality, functionality, and magic, forming an open system that transforms Objects into forms of presence.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding the magical element, I believe it is of the utmost importance to once again apply these Western conceptualizations to South America. Valentina Montero, in her essay <em>Hechizos para salvar el mundo <\/em>(2016), analyzes <em>bricolage <\/em>from this perspective, noting that, while there is no literal translation for this word in our language\u2014as noted in the footnotes of all the Spanish-language editions of <em>The Savage Mind<\/em> that I have read\u2014we do have our own terms to describe this same process of assembly carried out by Wiki Pirela and Armando Rever\u00f3n in their works and also by us, as Latin Americans, in our daily lives. In the specific case of Venezuela, one form of <em>bricolage <\/em>might be \u201cparapetos,\u201d a term we use when we make an improvised repair. In this sense, \u201cwe\u2019re parapeteando\u201d means improvising with materials to try to fix something and restore its function; using whatever we have on hand and our quick wit to bring it back to life and keep it going for as long as possible.<\/p>\n<p>In Chile, people also take refuge behind something, although the word used to describe this act is different\u2014one that strikes me as far more accurate and with which L\u00e9vi-Strauss might be more comfortable: the <em>hechizo, <\/em>or <em>spell <\/em>in English. According to Montero, this process consists of creating or repairing Objects whose functionality is called into question: so we<em> cast spells on<\/em> them, improving them so as not to discard their usefulness. These assemblages also carry political weight, which allows us to connect Montero\u2019s reflections with Richard\u2019s position. Indeed, this idea of sorcery can be identified with what Walter Mignolo calls <em>\u201cepistemic <\/em>disobedience\u201d\u2014that is, an act that contributes to the denaturalization of universalist modern knowledge exercised through the dominant hegemonic logic, in order to offer, instead, a horizon of life that functions as a critical alternative to modernity and neoliberal civilization<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-14\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"14\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-14\">14<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"14\">Valentina Montero, <em>Hechizos para salvar el mundo<\/em>, Santiago, 2016, p. 3. <\/span>. Although the act of shielding or casting a spell does not generally stem from a choice but rather from a necessity, it can then be transformed into a conscious political exercise\u2014for example, by being transferred to the realm of art as a tool for dissemination.<\/p>\n<p>To illustrate how a \u201cspell\u201d might be perceived, we can revisit the catalog for Rever\u00f3n\u2019s exhibition <em>El lugar de los objetos <\/em>(Fig. 9). There we recognize various musical instruments\u2014an accordion and a cuatro, for example\u2014as well as several masks, candlesticks, hats, and decorative objects such as bouquets of flowers, necklaces, a small knife, and a fan, all made from whatever materials the artist had on hand at the time: rope, jute, natural pigments, etc. To a certain extent, Rever\u00f3n\u2019s paintings also had a certain \u201cmagic\u201d to them, especially when we consider that the artist worked on unprimed canvases, leaving them raw. Let\u2019s return, for example, to his oil on linen <em>painting Puerto cerca de la Guaira <\/em>(\u201cPort near La Guaira\u201d) (1942\u20131945) (Fig. 10): along with observing how the pigments blend with the canvas, we can also see a carefully crafted frame, made of twigs delicately tied by hand. Rever\u00f3n also used \u201csticks\u201d to construct the <em>Skeletons <\/em>of his dolls or his <em>Hunting Nets <\/em>made of vine and cabuya. The first step in the process of creating all these Objects was, therefore, to take a walk through the small town of Macuto and gather\u2014first with his eyes and then with his hands reaching into his pockets\u2014tree branches, before arriving at <em>El Castillete <\/em>to build a home using the collected Objects.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8279\" style=\"width: 334px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8279\" class=\"wp-image-8279 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Catalogo-entero-223x300.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"324\" height=\"436\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Catalogo-entero-223x300.webp 223w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Catalogo-entero-760x1024.webp 760w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Catalogo-entero-111x150.webp 111w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Catalogo-entero-768x1034.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Catalogo-entero.webp 891w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 324px) 100vw, 324px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8279\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 9. Objets by Rever\u00f3n in the exhibition catalog <em>El lugar de los objetos<\/em> at Galer\u00eda Nacional de Arte de Caracas, 2001<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_8280\" style=\"width: 463px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8280\" class=\"wp-image-8280 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420-300x192.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"453\" height=\"290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420-300x192.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420-1024x656.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420-150x96.png 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420-768x492.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420-1200x768.png 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cuadro-costero-antiguo-en-marco-de-ramas-e1790873562420.png 1318w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 453px) 100vw, 453px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8280\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figura 10. Armando Rever\u00f3n, <em>Puerto cerca de la Guaira<\/em>, 1942-1945<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Part Three. The Creation of \u201cObjects\u201d: In Response to What?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned above, Armando Rever\u00f3n grew up in a Venezuela that was changing rapidly. In this regard, Luis Enrique P\u00e9rez Oramas notes that, while the artist was building his \u201cCastle\u201d\u2014a refuge of palm trees and stones\u2014his country was rapidly discovering and embracing the face of modernity. His move to the Macuto coast, around 1922, coincided in fact with the first oil well discoveries in Zulia state: first the Zumaque I well (1914), and then the Barroso II well (1922), a monumental event that demonstrated the immense wealth of Venezuela\u2019s subsoil and attracted various international corporations to the country. Later, in the artist\u2019s final days, the dictatorship of Marcos P\u00e9rez Jim\u00e9nez handed over the oil business to these foreign companies\u2014the Creole Petroleum Corporation and Royal Dutch Shell\u2014and used the royalties to invest in infrastructure, transforming oil wealth into major public works, most of them made of concrete. Among these were the Humboldt Hotel, the R\u00f3mulo Gallegos Highway, the El Silencio Housing Development, and the Sabana Grande Boulevard.<\/p>\n<p>Upon arriving in Caracas after his trip through Europe, Rever\u00f3n\u2014who, as we\u2019ve already mentioned, came from a well-to-do family\u2014might have immersed himself in the habits of the Caracas elite, who enjoyed that icy brutalism as a refuge from the sun. He might also have flaunted the Goyaesque academicism he encountered in Spain and copied French Impressionism stroke by stroke, a style that still enjoyed great popularity in the city. However, the artist decided to turn his back on all of this to revel in his <em>Castillete<\/em>, even as he removed his work from any existing categorization. Marta Traba notes that even before Rever\u00f3n\u2019s time, there were other artists who were moving in the same direction by voluntarily isolating themselves, including Pedro Figari (Montevideo, 1861) and Wifredo Lam (Cuba, 1902). But the truth is that Rever\u00f3n came to stand out among his \u201cmodern\u201d peers thanks to his extraordinary lucidity, which was perhaps granted to him by that very light that blinded him\u2014the light that, according to many, fried his brain. It is here that the paradigm of \u201cmismatch\u201d announced by Traba unfolds in all its weight:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cRever\u00f3n is the paradigm of dislocation; he embodies evasion and captures in his painting the vision of a nature that is empty, bewildered, and stunned. He represents a deliberate return to barbarism at the very moment when society was being forced at a rapid pace into a supercivilization propelled by oil wells toward a brilliant yet uncertain future. Rever\u00f3n\u2019s subject matter is detached from any context; it is the primal conception of man who ends up naked, bearded, stubbornly confined to sustaining the relationships of existence at their most elemental level\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-15\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"15\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-15\">15<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"15\">Marta Traba, \u201cCap\u00edtulo IV: Problemas de influencias, de universalismo y localismo, de t\u00e9cnicas y de significados en la obra de Andr\u00e9s de Santamar\u00eda\u201d, in <em>Historia abierta del arte colombiano<\/em>, Bogot\u00e1, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2016, p. 136.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>In this same essay, Marta Traba alludes to how, in Rever\u00f3n\u2019s desert-themed canvases, light operates with an effect that annihilates matter, establishing a new American aesthetic order. Although I agree with this assertion, I believe that, rather than a new aesthetic order established through painting, it is a new aesthetic order grounded in a way of life. Traba asserts that, as a result of the blinding power of light, the Objects in Rever\u00f3n\u2019s paintings seem to glide by with almost no material presence, subtly emerging only from surviving details: a gleaming white sheet, the faint outline of a mountain, a shape that fades into the luminous immensity of the beach&#8230; but this sort of indifference that, according to Traba, Rever\u00f3n displays toward the Objects in his painting has a flip side in the materiality of <em>El Castillete<\/em>. Yes: Rever\u00f3n makes objects disappear through light in his paintings; however, he then brings them into being with his own hands. As Oramas states, <em>El Castillete <\/em>is the first of these objects. It is the result of that grand act of scavenging that becomes sorcery and allows all the other objects to come to life. A piercing birth, strictly political. And here I return to Traba\u2019s reflections, for it is Rever\u00f3n\u2019s encounter with the forces of nature that allows everything to be thrown completely off balance. As the author states, by virtue of this encounter, Rever\u00f3n delves into a \u201clucid anarchy,\u201d resisting the new transculturations that economic prosperity was ushering in within his own country: \u201c(&#8230;) Rever\u00f3n projects his barbarism as a challenge when modern Venezuelan history, abruptly breaking away from the history of the continent, places itself under the sign of the oil dollar and the danger of cultural opportunism begins to loom over it\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-16\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"16\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-16\">16<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"16\">Ibid., p. 145.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Let us now consider how Wiki Pirela creates her Objects. In the exhibition <em>La Reina<\/em>, for example, the artist decides to build a castle for her mother, once again using mixed-media materials\u2014such as cardboard\u2014that are durable yet humble (Fig. 11). What seems to interest her here is the possibility of enchanting Objects to challenge certain ideas and prejudices about life in the hillside neighborhood. In more than one conversation, Wiki and I agreed that there are many stereotypes about life in the hills, when the fact is that the homes built there\u2014despite having been constructed by the residents themselves\u2014stand firm, function well, and are also spaces where diverse emotions come to the surface. These are not merely spaces of violence and conflict, but also places where people live and dwell with dignity. Thus, the exhibition is titled <em>La Reina <\/em>precisely to question why one could not feel valued in spaces like these.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8283\" style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8283\" class=\"wp-image-8283\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LR-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"313\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LR-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LR-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LR-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LR.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8283\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 11. Wiki Pirela, <em>La Reina,<\/em> exposici\u00f3n held at Galer\u00eda Abra Caracas, 2024<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In another conversation, Wiki and I briefly compared his work to the artistic practices reflected in the clothing of the \u201cdandis\u201d of the Congo\u2014a subculture found in both the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These are workers who wear extremely expensive designer clothes (such as Gucci, Prada, or Armani) to peacefully and proudly resist the stereotypes surrounding their way of life and to seek dignity in the midst of poverty. Even in the most progressive circles, this practice is heavily criticized in the West, as it is assumed that in territories impoverished by the Global North there is no room for the practice of elegance or that the people living there \u201cshouldn\u2019t dress that way.\u201d However, this hegemonic narrative fails to take into account everything that lies behind this subculture: the curation of the wardrobe, the research conducted and the style proposed, the investment of time, attention, and creativity that can be recognized in every form of expression. Just like Wiki with her \u201cCardboard Castle,\u201d these dandies are also challenging their reality. As she herself explains:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly what interests me: why can\u2019t I talk about royalty in a neighborhood\u2014I mean, why can\u2019t I feel like a queen in a small bed shared with three people? Why can\u2019t I? I mean, what makes me less capable of feeling \u2018such-and-such in such-and-such a space\u2019? My work speaks a little to that, and that\u2019s also why it has this element of magical realism\u2014because it\u2019s obviously made with found materials\u2014there\u2019s the theme of collecting again\u2014it\u2019s made with low-cost materials, and it\u2019s very playful too. I\u2019m very interested in play; I\u2019m interested in this idea of fiction, because I believe that imagination is one of the few things they can\u2019t charge us for\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-17\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"17\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-17\">17<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"17\">Wiki Pirela, Interview with the author, 2026.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Part Four. On Earthquakes and Superstitions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While I was writing this essay, the two bodies of \u201cObjetualities\u201d that I set out to study and compare here\u2014the one produced by Armando Rever\u00f3n during the first half of the 20th century and the one being produced, a century later, by Wiki Pirela\u2014came together, perhaps for the first time, on Venezuelan soil. The encounter took place in 2026 and, to my surprise, occurred in Caracas, the city where both artists were born.<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, the Abra Gallery once again opened its doors to Wiki with the exhibition <em>Acto de fe <\/em>(\u201cAct of faith\u201d), a show in which the artist elevates the experience of migration to a celestial plane (Fig. 12). There, she features the \u201cVirgin of the Cockroaches\u201d as the central figure\u2014a deity who began appearing to her in dreams after she settled in Santiago. Wiki began to pay attention to her clairvoyance and, through a process of inference and speculation, concluded that this must be the patron saint of migrants. According to the artist, she appears \u201cdraped in a black velvet cloak that protects and conceals her eight legs, dressed in a deep green gown, and crowned by a large halo of gold-colored cardboard that restores sacredness to that which has been discarded\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-18\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"18\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-18\">18<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"18\"><em>Acto de fe<\/em>, Caracas, Galer\u00eda ABRA, 2026. Exhibition Catalogue [<a href=\"https:\/\/abracaracas.com\/exposicion\/acto-de-fe-wiki-pirela\/\">https:\/\/abracaracas.com\/exposicion\/acto-de-fe-wiki-pirela\/<\/a>]<\/span>. Thus, Wiki reimagines the figure of the cockroach here: a bastardized, disgusting creature that everyone avoids or seeks to exterminate because it is considered a pest\u2014a caricature that, incidentally, resonates with that of displaced peoples who are marginalized. However, there is also another, perhaps more interesting, similarity between these subjects and cockroaches, which has to do with resilience, the ability to adapt to change, and this insect\u2019s extraordinary power of survival in the face of natural and epochal disasters. Certainly, in both cases, one can consider the idea of a plague that everyone wants to eradicate but that continues to multiply.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8278\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8278\" class=\"wp-image-8278\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-300x212.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"464\" height=\"328\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-300x212.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-1024x725.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-150x106.png 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-768x544.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-1536x1088.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33-1200x850.png 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Captura-de-pantalla-2026-09-30-a-las-14.21.33.png 1576w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 464px) 100vw, 464px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8278\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 12. Wiki Pirela, <em>Acto de Fe<\/em>, exhibition held at Galer\u00eda Abra Caracas, 2026<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In Wiki\u2019s case, of course, this refers first and foremost to the Venezuelan diaspora, which today constitutes nearly one-third of the country\u2019s total population, with 8.7 million Venezuelans living outside Venezuela as a result of a dictatorship whose foundations were first laid with Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s rise to power in 1999. For this leaderless exodus, Wiki creates a patron saint. In her installation, the artist venerates this little virgin, hanging prayers and plaques of gratitude on her. In addition, she performs a piece to emulate her, in which she dons a green tunic, puts on a golden halo, and extends the little arms of a cockroach from her body. Together with singer-songwriter Lupe Guill\u00e9n, Wiki also composes a song for this \u201cVirgin of no one \/ Virgin of nothing \/ who blesses even those who curse the plague.\u201d The song traverses a host of experiences that we migrants survive: borders, apathy, xenophobia, homesickness, the lost home, and the compass that is our feet. Along this path, we also go about living our lives, and it is the Virgin who accompanies and cares for us, \u201cthe invisible ones,\u201d \u201cthose who do not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Virgin thus becomes a new Object created by Wiki: a rather divine Object, evoked through faith and which, perhaps, could also have been imagined by someone like Rosamel del Valle, whose lexicon for referring to Objects overflows with the inert\u2014in the sense that he presents the Object as the container, the place where all the scavenged items, the assemblages, and the feelings that motivate those assemblages\u2014whether earthly or heavenly\u2014end up. In the middle of the gallery, Wiki once again places what at first glance appears to be a house, although in this case it is a structure the artist titles <em>La Cueva <\/em>(\u201cThe Cave\u201d) (2026), also made of cardboard, where believers pay homage to their patron saint (Fig. 13). There is a self-portrait of the Virgin, a bedside table, a bed, a chair, a lamp, a bathroom with a vanity, and a decorative piece bearing the inscription: <em>\u201cMy defense is poetry<\/em>.\u201d The House-Cave and these Objects, all made of cardboard, manage to rise up, blurring the boundaries of faith and challenging xenophobic discourses that treat Venezuelan migrants as a \u201cplague,\u201d while simultaneously reframing migration as a space or instance where Objects that function collectively can emerge\u2014and where community, care, and hope also manifest in the face of uprooting<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-19\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"19\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-19\">19<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"19\">Idem<\/span>. This reminds us of something that continues to resonate in Winnicott\u2019s theory of <em>the transitional object<\/em>: when we leave our home, our motherland, we also need to create a new container, a great Object that cradles the newcomers\u2014in other words, we once again need Objects and must bestow affection upon them in the hope of coming back to life as we once did. Along these lines, the song \u201cVirgen de las Cucarachas\u201d concludes with the line: <em>\u201cYour home has become the world, and you can no longer help but move<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8274\" style=\"width: 482px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8274\" class=\"wp-image-8274\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/actodefe2-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"472\" height=\"314\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/actodefe2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/actodefe2-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/actodefe2-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/actodefe2.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 472px) 100vw, 472px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8274\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 13. Wiki Pirela, <em>La Cueva,<\/em> 2026<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As I noted above, concurrent with this exhibition by Wiki, just a few blocks from the Abra Gallery, an exhibition of Armando Rever\u00f3n\u2019s work was also held. This exhibition took place at the Caraca Museum of Contemporary Art, located in the Parque Central complex, which for many years bore the name of its founder\u2014the journalist and champion of Venezuelan culture Sof\u00eda Imber\u2014but today bears the painter\u2019s name. Titled <em>Armando Rever\u00f3n: Una mirada tropical, <\/em>this exhibition brought together more than 43 works: nudes, landscapes, portraits, and also Objects that function as compasses for navigating the light of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n<p>However, just as I was reflecting on this extraordinary coincidence, on June 24, 2026, a tragedy struck: two earthquakes ravaged Venezuelan territory, particularly affecting Caracas and La Guaira, an area that was practically destroyed in its entirety by the sheer number of collapsed buildings. We still cannot be certain of the extent of the damage: as of the date of this writing, there are still thousands of people trapped in the rubble, thousands of dead, and orphaned children, abandoned by a government that offers no response to the catastrophe and has only intervened to block humanitarian aid from abroad and from the people themselves; the latter being the only aid we have relied on during these 26 years of dictatorship. Jos\u00e9 Luis P\u00e9rez Oramas\u2014the same curator who in 2001 taught us that the house, in Rever\u00f3n, is the \u201cfirst of the Objects\u201d\u2014wrote an enlightening piece on this subject a few days ago, titled \u201cVenezuela and the Cannibal State,\u201d in the Spanish newspaper ABC. Twenty-five years after curating the Objects of <em>El Castillete<\/em>, facing a desolate landscape filled with destroyed homes and lives left adrift, the author returns to Rever\u00f3n, finding there a figure from whom we can still learn how to relate to the Objects and, together with him, crafting a critique of the illusion of \u201cVenezuelan Modernity,\u201d which now, in light of the collapses and state neglect, is exposed as a deception. In these days of extreme despair and mourning, it is the heroic civil society that, amid tears and rubble, searches for the missing and rebuilds the destroyed homes. And in this scene, under the sun of La Guaira, a Rever\u00f3n-esque gesture emerges: to sift through the landscape once more and make the remains the center of life. As P\u00e9rez Oramas points out:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cPerhaps we Venezuelans have not yet internalized Rever\u00f3n\u2019s lesson: that it is possible to attain the light of modernity without possessing a death-wish-like will to power; that it is possible to be modern without authoritatively imposing any aspect of that modernity on anyone; that it is possible, from the margins, to raise the most emblematic of banners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And he continues:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">&#8220;Where Rever\u00f3n lived, nature, with its indifferent fury, has already struck twice, tracing yet another somber arc of death and destruction, wiping that artist\u2019s home\u2014and every roof, every shelter, every plot of land around it\u2014from the face of the earth. Time\u2014which does not exist in the basic equations of reality, the time that we humans project onto the world\u2019s duration to impose upon it the fiction of a direction\u2014would suggest that this arc marked, between 1999 and 2026, the birth and death of the cannibal state, of the government that feeds on its people, nourishing itself on their starving entrails and surviving at the expense of decay, or of the endless flight of its organic subjects, the Venezuelans\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-20\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"20\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-20\">20<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"20\">Jos\u00e9 Luis P\u00e9rez Oramas, \u201cVenezuela y el Estado can\u00edbal\u201d, in <em>ABC<\/em>, June 30, 2026 [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.es\/internacional\/luis-perezoramas-venezuela-estado-canibal-20260629031407-nt.html\">https:\/\/www.abc.es\/internacional\/luis-perezoramas-venezuela-estado-canibal-20260629031407-nt.html<\/a><u>]<\/u><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Let us pause to consider those <em>two occasions <\/em>when, according to P\u00e9rez Oramas, <em>nature has taken its toll <\/em>on the Macuto area: the first was in December 1999\u2014the same year Hugo Ch\u00e1vez rose to power\u2014when the Vargas landslide buried the coastline and wiped from the face of the earth what remained of <em>El Castillete<\/em>, the first of the Objects, Rever\u00f3n\u2019s first house; the second is now, in June 2026, when there is no longer a Castillete left to wipe out and the rubble consists of all the homes of the Venezuelan people. The temporal arc traced by Oramas is precise and chilling: the period of the dictatorship opens with the destruction of the artist\u2019s House and, perhaps, will close with the destruction caused by these two earthquakes. As if the Cannibal State had needed, in order to be born, for the very refuge that taught Venezuela it was possible to live differently to first disappear.<\/p>\n<p>Evoking our Brazilian brothers and their anthropophagic manifesto, P\u00e9rez Oramas then argues that there are two ways of devouring: that of the Cannibal State, which swallows its people and regurgitates nothing (only ruin, exodus, rubble); and another form that I have attempted to trace in this essay: that of the Caribbean Sea, which regurgitated wood and fibers onto the beach for Rever\u00f3n to find and use to build a house, or that of the bustling city that today regurgitates cardboard for Wiki to assemble his own. We will therefore have to feed on this horrific disaster, devour our remains to regurgitate them transformed into something else: into Objects. This scavenger-like anthropophagy is what can stand against state cannibalism. We have only our hands to rebuild, from the rubble, new enchanted Objects. Because the light\u2014the one my grandmother Margris remembers over the waters of Macuto, the one Rever\u00f3n pursued until it blinded him, the one no dictatorship has <em>ever <\/em>known how to manage\u2014continues to fall each morning upon the rubble. <em>The light never went away<\/em>. And upon it, Venezuelans will once again raise the World of Objects.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Final Section: Alejandra Otero, \u201cA Country That Is Made and Unmade\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the midst of this catastrophe, all of us Venezuelans have had to step up and contribute through our respective professions due to the lack of state support we are experiencing,\u201d says documentary photographer, journalist, and professor Alejandra Otero. Faced with an absent state, no one has stood idly by. Teachers have had to build makeshift schools with their own hands and the debris left behind by the destruction, so they can continue educating students. Camps like \u201cCiudad Carpita\u201d in La Guaira have become homes for many disaster victims, who have named these shelters after their collapsed homes. Doctors have had to set aside their regular work to care for the victims of the twin earthquakes, doing what they can despite the lack of supplies. Owners of heavy machinery have offered their equipment to clear debris and rescue those who were trapped and are still alive, or to recover the bodies of those who have died and return them to their families so they can give them a dignified funeral. For Alejandra, the conclusion is clear: \u201cThe orphaned community ends up fending for itself in the absence of an institutional framework,\u201d even with the arrival of foreign humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n<p>From the perspective of photography and documentary journalism, Alejandra felt compelled to go out and document the disaster: \u201cFor me, there was no other choice.\u201d Amid this situation, she began working with foreign and local organizations to document the voices and lives of those who have lost everything, creating\u2014through dialogue, interviews, and images\u2014an institutional archive of what happened on June 24. At the same time, Alejandra is also building a much more intimate archive: as a photographer, she has managed to delve into the nooks and crannies of the disaster, looking beyond the jarring image that halts reflection due to the pain it causes. When visiting destroyed or damaged homes, she witnesses the emergence of another narrative. She positions herself behind the \u201cfront lines\u201d of the tragedy\u2019s early days and begins to portray a different world: the one that emerges after Mother Earth\u2014that first Home\u2014is destroyed. A sad everyday reality, yet one in which, little by little, certain glimmers of joy reappear. There, the victims gather to watch the World Cup soccer matches; girls play at braiding each other\u2019s hair; classes at school continue (Figs. 14, 15 and 16). And amid all the pain, the Objects\u2014physical, clairvoyant, and communal\u2014re-emerge. Alejandra notes that, while no one is prepared to experience a natural disaster in a country that has been bleeding itself dry for decades, amid that sense of loss, what is inherently human emerges: flashes of calm, camaraderie, compassion, and even enthusiasm to rebuild from the ruins left by the destruction.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8288\" style=\"width: 462px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8288\" class=\"wp-image-8288\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2-300x200.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"452\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2-1024x682.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2-150x100.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2-1200x800.jpeg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-2.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 452px) 100vw, 452px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8288\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 14. Alejandra Otero, <em>Un pa\u00eds que se hace y se deshace<\/em>, 2026<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_8289\" style=\"width: 484px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8289\" class=\"wp-image-8289\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-300x200.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"316\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-1024x682.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-150x100.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM-1200x800.jpeg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.33-PM.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8289\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 15. Alejandra Otero, <em>Un pa\u00eds que se hace y se deshace,<\/em> 2026<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_8287\" style=\"width: 499px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8287\" class=\"wp-image-8287\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM-300x200.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"489\" height=\"326\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM-1024x682.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM-150x100.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM-1200x800.jpeg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-09-30-at-2.26.31-PM.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 489px) 100vw, 489px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8287\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 16. Alejandra Otero, <em>Un pa\u00eds que se hace y se deshace<\/em>, 2026<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In a nod to the poem <em>La isla en peso <\/em>(1943) by Cuban writer Virgilio Pi\u00f1era, Alejandra has titled this personal photographic series <em>Un pa\u00eds que se hace y se deshace <\/em>(\u201cA Country That Is Made and Unmade\u201d). This is significant because Pi\u00f1era\u2019s text was published as a direct and antagonistic response to the vision of Cuba promoted at the time by the famous literary group \u201cOr\u00edgenes,\u201d led by Jos\u00e9 Lezama Lima, which portrayed the country as a paradise, extolling the exotic landscape and the Caribbean light as the solution to every problem. In contrast to this optimism that looked toward the spirit and the light, Pi\u00f1era forced the reader to look down at the ground, toward the mud and the flesh, and to recognize themselves as surrounded by a vast pool of water that isolated and bred misery, poverty, and disease. Thus, Alejandra\u2019s quotation is a gesture intended to prevent her photographs from being read as a mere representation of a pristine Caribbean landscape where pleasure is the central focus. Instead, what these images seek to show is rather how this joy emerges, by force, from the margins. It does not appear as if by magic, but springs from the drive of people who, drawing on their own remnants of energy and the rubble of the landscape, struggle with all their might to rise again.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot help but be struck by the fact that, within the verses of <em>La isla en peso<\/em>, \u201cObjects\u201d also make an appearance, pointing to how, in the Cuban territory, everything passes through the body and the sense of touch. Indeed, in Pi\u00f1era\u2019s writing, the island\u2019s inhabitants do not feel love in their souls; they feel it in the material world. The body and matter thus become, once again, living presences that offer companionship. The makeshift home becomes eternal for a few days to ensure survival in the midst of a suffocating country: as Pi\u00f1era says, \u201cmay the chaotic symbols of love be the first objects you touch\u201d<sup id=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-21\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"21\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-00000000000011f20000000000000000_8271-21\">21<\/a><\/sup><span role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"21\">Virgilio Pi\u00f1era, <em>La isla en peso: un poema<\/em>, La Habana, Tipograf\u00eda Garc\u00eda, 1943. Consulted in Internet Archive. [<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/la-isla-en-peso\">https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/la-isla-en-peso<\/a>]<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Acto de fe<\/em>, Caracas, Galer\u00eda ABRA, 2026. Exhibition Catalogue. [<a href=\"https:\/\/abracaracas.com\/exposicion\/acto-de-fe-wiki-pirela\/\">https:\/\/abracaracas.com\/exposicion\/acto-de-fe-wiki-pirela\/<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Jens Andermann, \u201cRever\u00f3n: El Paisaje Evanescente\u201d, in<em> Los m\u00e1rgenes, las orillas, los bordes. T\u00f3picos del Seminario<\/em>, 29, Zurich, 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, <em>El pensamiento salvaje<\/em>, M\u00e9xico, Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 1992.<\/p>\n<p>Oriana Mej\u00edas Martinez, &#8220;Wiki Pirela: La Reina&#8221;, in <em>Artishock<\/em>, June 19, 2024 [<a href=\"https:\/\/artishockrevista.com\/2024\/06\/19\/wiki-pirela-la-reina\/\">https:\/\/artishockrevista.com\/2024\/06\/19\/wiki-pirela-la-reina\/<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Justo Pastor Mellado, <em>El deseo de casa: El lugar de Armando Rever\u00f3n en las inflexiones metodol\u00f3gicas habilitadas por las curator\u00edas de infraestructura.<\/em> Caracas, Unpublished, 2001.<\/p>\n<p>Valentina Montero, <em>Hechizos para salvar el mundo<\/em>, Santiago, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Jos\u00e9 Luis P\u00e9rez Oramas, \u201cVenezuela y el Estado can\u00edbal\u201d, in <em>ABC<\/em>, June 30, 2026 [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.es\/internacional\/luis-perezoramas-venezuela-estado-canibal-20260629031407-nt.html\">https:\/\/www.abc.es\/internacional\/luis-perezoramas-venezuela-estado-canibal-20260629031407-nt.html<\/a><u>]<\/u><\/p>\n<p>Virgilio Pi\u00f1era, <em>La isla en peso: un poema<\/em>, La Habana, Tipograf\u00eda Garc\u00eda, 1943. Consulted in Internet Archive. [<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/la-isla-en-peso\">https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/la-isla-en-peso<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Nelly Richard, \u201cDesecho neobarroco: costra y adornos\u201d, in <em>Residuos y met\u00e1foras: ensayos de cr\u00edtica cultural sobre el Chile de la transici\u00f3n<\/em>, Santiago, Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1998.<\/p>\n<p>Marta Traba, \u201cCap\u00edtulo IV: Problemas de influencias, de universalismo y localismo, de t\u00e9cnicas y de significados en la obra de Andr\u00e9s de Santamar\u00eda\u201d, in <em>Historia abierta del arte colombiano<\/em>, Bogot\u00e1, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Rosamel del Valle, <em>Eva y la Fuga<\/em>, Santiago, Ediciones La Pollera, 2017.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref18\" name=\"_ftn18\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Text written by Daniela del Valle as part of the sixth call for applications for the Il Posto Research Grant, which focuses on the work of Wiki Pirela and Armando Rever\u00f3n.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_focuskw":"","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":""},"categories":[40],"class_list":["post-8271","texto","type-texto","status-publish","hentry","category-research-grant"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - 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