Delirios [Delirium]

Josefina Fontecilla creates objects that invoke a sense of loss and nostalgia. By displaying the effects of time on the ordinary objects that form the backdrop to our lives, she draws our attention to the slow processes of decay that are implicit in life. In Delirios the artist used the brocade wall fabrics typical of upper-class Chilean houses at the beginning of the last century. By removing sections of this fabric from a turn-of-the-century home and exhibiting them in a gallery, she evokes in the viewer a sense of nostalgia for the missing house. The darker ghostlike forms on the panels are a trace of the objects (pictures or mirrors) that once hung on them. These negative forms, created by the bleaching effects of the sun on the uncovered fabric around them, serve as a double memory: the shadow of a vanished object and the record of passing time in this once domestic space.