CONSTELACIONES was a project-based collective for the performance project, Return Atacama, where the group traveled to Chile’s infamously storied Atacama Desert to return a large set of vibrant sculptural forms. The heavy ceramic forms, created by Monica Martinez, are woven from stratified layers of Chilean history and from diasporic and nomadic trajectories resulting from the 1973 coup.

CONSTELACIONES artist collective embodies collective healing through kinship and vulnerability—rejecting isolation, silence, and disconnection in the face of trauma. Drawing from interdisciplinary practices that include sculpture, performance, installation, sound, and video, artists Roewan Crowe (Winnipeg, MB), Doris Difarnecio (Chile, Argentina, Brazil), Christina Hajjar (Winnipeg, MB), Monica Martinez (Edmonton, AB), and Helene Vosters (Winnipeg, MB) engage in a process-based trans-hemispheric collaboration. CONSTELACIONES explores the reflective remains of their series of performances: “Lake Winnipeg,” “Wrapping Atacama,” “Return Atacama,” and “Echoes: North…North.”

Digital Book 

Return Atacama: Engaging Histories of Political Violence Through Performance and Durational Witnessing, edited by Dr. Roewan Crowe and Dr. Helene Vosters, HemiPress, 2019.

Performances

Lake Winnipeg, January 23, 2016
Wrapping Atacama, April 16, 2016
Return Atacama, July 13, 2016
Echoes: North…North, July 22, 2016

Work group

Artist as Repertoire: Unceded Imaginaries, “eXcéntrico: dissidence, sovereignties, performance,” July, 2016, Santiago, Chile

Residency

greenhouse artlab, UWinnipeg January 13-31, 2017
Press: Growing art in the greenhouse, UWinnipeg News Centre

Artist talk

The Caroline Dukes Memorial Artist Talk, Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, March 3, 2017.
Review by Letch Kinloch: “Winnipeg Report: The Slippage of Memory,” Canadian Art, March 15, 2017.