Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to present Imagen país, Cestera (2025) a new ceramic sculpture by Mapuche artist Seba Calfuqueo. Working across ceramics, performance, installation, and video, Calfuqueo draws on her Mapuche heritage and lived experience as a member of the transgender community to explore the intersections between Indigenous and Western cultures. She reflects critically on the social, cultural, and political dynamics that shape Mapuche life in contemporary Chile, confronting the effects of colonisation, while advocating for the land rights, self-determination and cultural recognition of her people.
Imagen país is a series of ceramic works that honours the Mapuche people’s craft traditions. Each sculpture is rendered in a glimmering cobalt lustre that pays tribute to the Mapuche’s connection to the sky and sea, and all that lies in between, embodying the philosophy of ‘küme mongen’, or ‘good living’, which underpins their worldview. In Mapudungun, their Indigenous language, ‘Mapuche’ translates to ‘people of the land’, capturing a deep reverence for their ancestral homelands. Mapuche societies have existed in Chile and Argentina since at least 500 BC and despite colonial pressures, they have managed to preserve skills and artisanal practices – including textile, pottery and silverwork – honed over centuries of their existence.
In Cestera a woman sits cross-legged on the floor as she weaves a basket. Basketry has long been a part of the Mapuche way of life, in particular the hand-weaving of functional and decorative items from natural plant fibres. This sustainable livelihood both preserves and shares Mapuche culture, and in depicting the everyday practices of traditional craftspeople, Calfuqueo celebrates her people’s generational knowledge. The sculpture functions an act of resistance against Mapuche erasure by rebuilding cultural memory in the face of the colonial processes that aimed to assimilate and dispossess them of their territories and customs.
Seba Calfuqueo (b. 1991, Santiago de Chile) is a Mapuche artist who lives and works in Santiago. She has participated in prominent biennial exhibitions internationally, including Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing (2024); 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere (2024); 22nd Bienal SESC Videobrasil, São Paulo (2023); and 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021). Recent solo exhibitions include Museu de Arte Moderna de Bogotá (2025); Galeria Marilia Razuk, São Paulo (2025; 2023); W Galería, Buenos Aires (2025); Palacio Pereira, Santiago (2023); and Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago (2023; 2021), amongst others. Her work is housed in the collections of Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Denver Art Museum, CO; Museo MALBA, Buenos Aires; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Kadist, Paris; MACRS – Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago; and MAC, Santiago.