Bortkastade minnen / Bevarade minnen
9–18 februari 2024
An archive consisting of discarded handwritten letters, photographs and objects such as wooden spoons. The material began to be collected in 2015 and the archive has grown over time. They are bought at flea markets, found in rubbish bins and even from the artist's personal family album. Four monitors show natural landscapes recorded during the four seasons of the year. Also a kind of memory pictures. A video piece that tells about a young person's experiences of creating an identity.
About the artist
Héctor Z Siluchi is an audiovisual artist who uses images and words in compositions as well as symbolic reinterpretations and deep personal autobiographical experiences. These experiences become universal when shared by thousands of men and women, from the rural countryside and those who have been forced into exile from their homelands. It is about taking these steps away from one's own culture to begin a process of incorporation into another foreign form of those who have suffered and of immigrants throughout the long history of humanity.
Siluchi was exiled from his country of origin Chile in 1984, during the military dictatorship. Currently lives and works in the Stockholm region. His work is always characterized by the maintenance of cultural identity, nostalgia for the past, memories, abandonment, beauty and belonging to a specific place from the perspective of someone from outside, a casual visitor.
In his works, Siluchi documents in a highly reflective manner events related to nation, religion and the type of actions or rituals that constitute a cultural heritage, as well as the basis for the construction of one's own personal identity.
The imprint of the ever-present memory, the break with the past and the diaspora* symbolism in the crossing of the sea, like the seagull's long wait for its food, an intelligent species of bird that travels long distances and has a complex method of communication and a highly developed social structure.
*The term "diaspora" is often used to describe a group of migrants who live in a country other than the country of origin but are still linked to it. The term has become an increasingly common feature in the research and political debate on the connection between migration and development.