Consuelo Walker
Bio
Consuelo Walker (Santiago 1985) has a degree in Visual Arts from the Catholic University of Chile. In 2008 he carried out an academic exchange at the University of Porto, Portugal; where he worked on stone and stained glass sculpture techniques. In 2009 he studied a Master's Degree in Cultural Management at the University of Chile. She worked in workshop 99 and at the same time worked as an engraving teacher in her private workshop and at the Universidad del Desarrollo of Chile. His artistic work took shape until it came to be framed in textile art where he works on the concepts of accumulation and excess, giving shape to sensory installations that speak of pleasure and pain. With four individual exhibitions in his career. The latest ones in NAC gallery and Artespacio gallery, Chile. In addition, it has several group exhibitions, among which stand out: two (2012-2018) at the National Museum of Fine Arts Chile, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chile (2013) and three years (2015, 2016 and 2017) at the Young Art Competition at the MAVI. In 2017 he won the award for best artistic project of the year from ED magazine; In 2018 he won the “Business for art offerto Artmajeur” Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, Italy. The same year he exhibited at "Vutamuseo" MAM Chiloé. In 2019 he participated in the Contemporary Textile Art Biennial of Madrid, Spain and in 2020 he won second prize in the young art contest of the Artespacio Gallery, Chile and in 2021 he participated in the exhibition “Fragmented Times” in the same gallery. In 2022 he participated in the group exhibition “Campo Difuso” at CV Galería, Chile.
Statement
My visual work has evolved in the midst of that paradoxical exchange between pain and pleasure, within a bond that forges a way in and a way out between sacred and profane. This allows me to become vulnerable and fragile as a creator, while also sporting the resilience needed to repair and recover that which had been lost to pain. These losses are related to the concepts of gender, identity and subversion. Memory and remembrance are the fuel for an exercise of recovery that re-signifies pain.
The body of my work materializes in volumes of excess and hoarding one single object, abandoning its usual purpose for a new intention, and re-signifying it. This is how works seen from the point of view of textile art repair and recover a sense of pleasure. Use of autonomous materials like sewing pins, scissors and needles intertwine in a combination that, from their tridimensionality and adjusted to other elements, repair and recover.
