Diego Fernández, Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta share the same background and have been friends since their school days in Santiago de Chile. Diego Fernández and Felipe Mujica founded “Galeria Chilena” in 1997, one of the first artist-run spaces in Chile after the end of the dictatorship. Until 2000, Galeria Chilena remained nomadically active in Santiago, serving as an important starting point for the newly awakened Chilean art scene. Diego Fernández, Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta have now been living in New York for five years. They make art and music, work as printers and interior designers, and aspire to international careers in the arts.
Esther Eppstein, message salon, first met the artists from Galeria Chilena in New York in 1998, when both off-spaces were invited to exhibit their projects at the Swiss Institute. In March of this year, Esther Eppstein met the three artists again in Valparaiso, Chile, at the International Conference of Independent Art Spaces (EIEI), and subsequently invited them to Zurich.
Diego Fernández, Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta are installing a multimedia spatial installation in the message salon, which is being created on site and showcases their long-standing artistic collaboration with music, performance, painting, video and sculpture. The band Tazos (Fernandez & Mujica) will present their newly pressed vinyl record “Frota-Frota” at the vernissage and perform live in Johanna Unzueta’s sculptural costumes.
On Thursday, 29 September, Diego Fernández, Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta will talk to Zurich curator Arthur Miranda about their artistic work, the history of Galeria Chilena and their new life and survival as young artists in New York City. Carmen Miranda serves Chilean pisco sour at the bar.
On Friday, 30 September, Tazos will present their performance “Dispersed Pieces of Something Part II” with video by Johanna Unzueta, as part of message salon, at the “Unruhe bitte” art festival, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee.