World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 522 - Álvaro Aroca Córdova

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 522 – Álvaro Aroca Córdova

The exhibition ‘Seeing through Embrace’. Memories of the Body and Absent Nature’ had a special opening. The Chilean artist Álvaro Aroca had risen out of himself and changed into another person, wearing a a black cloth, with a white gauze over his eyes and a long red cloth coming out of his mouth, every now and then letting out various cries.

He started in a kneeling position in front of a work at the back of the back room. Behind him hung a fabric with the contours of a person with a large red stain at the height of his right chest and from the bottom a number of dirty parts in which an embroidery trace had been drawn with red thread.

‘Soy parte de ti, dejame entrar’

He ended up at the very front of the gallery addressing the antagonist within himself as El Sombra (the shadow) and begging ‘Soy parte de ti, dejame entrar’ (I am a part of you, let me in). Ending with ‘Te abrazo’ (I embrace you).

“Memory lies in the shadow of oblivion. In that performance I was in another body to evoke the memories,” he says a few days later, when I speak to him in Gallery WM in Amsterdam. “I projected all my feelings onto that other person. The fabric in the back functioned as a portal traspasar, a way to choose a new dimension.”

Temuco, in the southern half of Chile

His artistic practice emerges from his my deep connection with the environment, rooted in his origins in Chile, he says. Alvaro comes from Temuco, in the southern half of Chile.

“I grew up surrounded by volcanoes, lakes, native trees, and turbulent rivers, fostering an organic bond that evolves with lived experiences. However, the current climate crisis transcends the spectrum of life, impacting our social, cultural, and even psychological dimensions. These issues directly affect my artistic processes, leading me to reflect on our present relationships with nature and how we envision the future of the planet we inhabit.

For this reason, I question the boundaries of the body and how they can be erased or redefined, exploring their organic and philosophical connections with the world around us.”

Relationship between body and nature

Alvaro Aroca is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher exploring the relationship between the body and the political construction of nature. Keywords are stain, shadow, forgotten memories, identity, void, periphery vs. centre.

Through various artistic practices such as embroidery, intervened engraved, textiles, and video performance, he challenges hegemonic narratives and imposed borders—both physical and symbolic—stemming from his experience of an ‘invented South’, as he calls it.

“My work is nourished by aesthetic and scientific approaches to reflect on our connection with the environment and the boundaries of identity. In this process, I seek to reframe the body and its role in shaping new forms of perception and thought.”

Does Alvaro have a Key Work in his total work?

He says that it is difficult to define a key artwork, as it depends on artistic evolution and the temporalities one experiences as an artist. “Some of my works have a life of their own, constantly mutating over time and transforming through different uses and experiences that accumulate in their layers.”

But if he could point to a key work, it is the one we talked about at the beginning of this story, the work right at the back of the back room, where his performance started.

“It is a textile piece that shifts between performance and embroidery, which has been with me since 2015 and is currently part of the exhibition at WM Gallery. This textile has been used in three performances in different cities, and I have embroidered on it, intertwining imagery with the recovery of forgotten memories related to nature. I believe this piece represents a turning point in my creative processes, transcending my own relationship with art.”

How long has he been an artist and what is his experience with artlife?

“My first exhibition in a gallery took place in the year 2000 when I was 20 years old. While pursuing my engineering studies, I trained as a visual artist in a self-taught manner. In 2011, I began my formal studies with a Master’s in Research and Artistic Creation at the University of the Basque Country, where I also completed a PhD in Visual Arts.

To develop my artistic practice, I have participated in solo and group exhibitions in Chile, Argentina, France, the Czech Republic, the United States, Spain, India, Portugal, the Netherlands, and South Korea. In 2020, my essay Eco-artistic Utopian Spaces: Towards the Reconstruction of Imaginaries Where Art and Nature Coexist was awarded in the Pliegue y Territorio Essay Competition by the Chilean Corporation of Video and Electronic Arts.”

Research

Research is an essential part of his work, leading him to undertake artist residencies at Open Atelier Zuidoost Foundation Rochdale (Amsterdam), the Consortium of Museums of Valencia (Chile/Spain), Espacio Réflex (Donosti/Spain), and Centrum Beeldende Kunst Zuidoost (Amsterdam). He was also part of the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale 2022 (South Korea), among other experiences.

“My most recent exhibitions in 2023 and 2025 took me to Bilbao, Amsterdam, and Madrid. In 2023, I participated in the JustX Lisboa art fair and won 2nd place in the Textile Video Art Salon at the Argentine Center of Textile Art in Buenos Aires with Kamapu. In 2024, I presented the performance The Sensitivity of Origin at the JustLatam fair at Casa de América (Madrid).

Currently, I am undertaking a Culture Moves Europe research and creation grant from the Goethe Institut in Amsterdam.”

Finally, what is his artistic philosophy?

“Being Latin American, as a result of a colonial process, entails a deep questioning of aesthetics and the construction of the reality in which I have lived. My imagination is shaped by a bodily and identity position formed under knowledge structures originating in Europe, often overshadowing local wisdom and worldviews.

I cannot choose whether or not to be a colonial being; my body has been molded within that conception and is a direct consequence of power structures. These same structures have also shaped our relationship with nature, from travelers’ descriptions of landscapes to the ultraliberal dimensions of contemporary society.

In this sense, I rethink key concepts such as identity and memory, territory and body, flesh and power, in their multiple layers. However, I believe my mission is not only to question but also to imagine what is possible—to conceive of the future we are already living as a present time, in a reverse journey toward the beginning and the essence of our relationships with nature.”

Images

1)When the Shadow Is Gone, 2) Installation, 3) Videoperformance, 4) Seeing through what is not there, 5) Beginning, 6) When the shadow is gone 1, 7) Resurrected Body, 8) Returning to the origin of the forgotten, 9) Portrait Alvaro Aroca Cordova, 10) Seeing Through the Embrace

https://www.facebook.com/alvaro.aroca
https://gallerywm.com/WP/alvaro-aroca-28-03-26-04-2025/
https://www.instagram.com/aaroka/
https://inzaken.eu/