Research Catalogue

Maria / Rosario Montero is an artist-researcher with a BA (PUC Chile), MFA (University of Chile), Master in Digital Anthropology (UCL) and recently PhD in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths College). She had his first solo exhibition at the CCE Gallery (Chile) in 2004. In addition, she participated in several group exhibitions in Chile, The Netherlands, China, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, Peru, the USA, and Venezuela. For several years, she had been selected for the government art fund (Fondart) to develop her practice.  Recently she received the second place for Beca Arte CCU and a post-doctoral fellowship in the Institute of Aesthetics  (PUC). Moreover, it is part of the selection of contemporary Chilean photographers for 02 / CNCA (2010) and C Photo edition, “New Latin Look” curated by Martin Parr (2012). Currently, she lives in Santiago de Chile, where she takes part in Border Agency art collective.

As a feminist research artist, I am interested in how power structures affect landscape, identity, and territory representations. I approach the topic from a theory-practice perspective, considering thinking, sensing and doing as relevant parts of knowledge production. As such, I work in the liminal space between art and anthropology by the methods used (ethnographic observation, photography and digital media) and the issues addressed. My work challenges the aesthetic value of the visual arts and questions the objectivity of ethnographic representation. My primary tools are my experience of embodying territorialised knowledge and photography. Thus, the photographic apparatus as an object of mediation provides tools that allow the displacement, interpretation and appropriation of the issues worked. Finally, I aim to question the photographic image’s indexical character and its colonial instrumentalisation.