Even if for just a couple of seconds, I feared the sea might swallow her completely. The thought was irrational—I had seen the artist alive just minutes before entering the exhibition room at Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende. Yet, instinct often outpaces reason, and my gut reaction surfaced before my mind could catch up. Carmona’s body appeared so delicate in such a wide screen, almost vanishing against the vast Pacific Ocean in the background.
The piece was crafted from dozens of garments collected through a public call. These were donated by various women reflecting on a phrase spoken by Ana González, a human rights activist who fought the Chilean dictatorship. In a 1996 documentary, while denouncing the forced disappearance of her husband, she declared that she felt like crying an ocean—but would only do so when the truth came to light.
To this day, hundreds of families remain in situations like González’s, unsure of the resting places of their loved ones. Uncertain whether such a place even exists, if their loved ones are still suffering, or if their bodies have succumbed to environmental destruction. This cruel reality continues to weigh heavily on the shoulders of the country’s citizens, even for those of us fortunate enough—like Gabriela Carmona and me—not to have lost anyone amidst the human rights violations.
Some people, unlike me, choose to respond to this reality with artistic sensitivity and profound understanding. That’s why I deeply admire Carmona’s unwavering courage in confronting the sea’s brutality. By recognizing her own suffering within the collective, the artist committed herself to safeguarding their shared creation, interpreting the fabric pieces of the blanket as silent witnesses—torniquetes that had absorbed pain. She embarked on a ritual to purify those bandages within the ocean, refusing to let go until the cleansing was complete.
Considering that hundreds of bodies were thrown into the sea to make them disappear during the so-called "TV retirement" operation, the artist’s performance carries a dual significance. On one hand, she allows the water to cleanse the bandages, mirroring a baptism, while also acknowledging the natural force that had been used against the innocent. In doing so, she restores the ocean to the innocence it held for her as a child, before it became a symbol of violence.
Having spent part of her childhood by the sea, the artist had the years to reflect on its magnificent presence. How could we, so small and fragile, come into contact with such a powerful and mysterious force as the vast ocean? After much contemplation, she chose to believe it existed as a universal reassurance—only such a powerful and enigmatic force could bear the weight of humanity’s sorrow.
Carmonas’ act unfolds to its conclusion as she resists the ocean’s pull on the fabric, retrieves it from the water, and spreads it across the sand. The long shots of the fabric resting on the beach emerge in silence, mirroring the drowned bodies washed ashore. These missing corpses, whose imperfect substitutes now emerge, serve only as a form of denunciation.
Even though the artist’s decision to save the blanket was never in question, she didn’t anticipate the creative ripples her action would create. She had no idea that years later, she would transform the giant fabric into a group of vestments, Reimagined as an aesthetic device she called Encanapieles (Skin- incarnations), seven absent bodies now hang from the second floor of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, emerging as silent witnesses resisting the legacy of past disappearances.
The pieces are exhibited in a room facing the one that holds the giant screen displaying the ritual, establishing a connection between the multiple phases of the project’s development. In the small space created by the corridor separating the rooms, two of the garments acquire a physical presence through solemn photographs. These open up spaces for Carmona’s photo performances, in which she holds a posture while gazing directly at the camera.
Through the portraits, a simple act like standing still becomes imbued with power, as the artist allows time to bear witness to the pain embedded in the clothing. In this stillness, Carmona’s presence becomes an act of resistance, claiming space to honor the absence of millions of bodies. A wooden plinth elevates her stature, positioning her as an altar. In one of the images, she stands atop the polished structure, her eyes partially closed, embodying reverence—praying at an altar where she is compelled to become her own saint.
In one of the images, she holds her posture, staring directly at the camera. It's as if she's challenging forgetfulness, vowing never to fade away. An embroidery on her chest reads 'Over my body,' a phrase that, in this context, evokes the meaning 'over my dead body.' By dressing in death itself, she merges with a collective immortality. Cloaked from head to toe in her encarnapieles, the artist dissolves her identity into the collective, becoming a witness to the absence of beloved unknowns.
ETERNALLY GAZING FOR ONE LAST TIME
The artist is not able to tell exactly what moved her into knowing her brother would die so soon. She simply knew his next inhalations and exhalations would be his last. Raising her voice, she called her mother's name, causing her to rush into the room next to the one where she was at that moment. Her footsteps hurried closely, leading her body to cross the threshold just as her son’s heart ceased to beat. His greenish blue eyes closed for a couple of seconds before opening them up again for one last time, leaving his stare lost in the void. That was the exact moment when the ocean’s melody stood still, presenting her with an image that would last for a lifetime.
To the artist's surprise, she didn’t experience her brother's death as a vicissitude; strangely, it felt like a rest. Even though the young man fought constantly to remain alive until the last moment, his surrender to death was absolute—perhaps because he knew he was not alone. Possibly that same awareness of proximity is what allowed her to cherish a spark of freedom at the moment her brother passed away: being able to contemplate his soul leaving his body, taking flight.
Regardless of these feelings, her brother's death still marks her lifetime, carrying sorrow for decades to come. Conscious of the magnitude of her own pain, she considers herself incapable of imagining her mother’s experience. Losing a son is like surviving perpetual death.Furthermore, even though she recognizes pain as a shared experience, she can’t fully grasp the sorrow felt by the mothers who lost their children during the Chilean dictatorship, deprived of the peace that the remains might evoke.
In the room next to the one containing the video performance—the dimension in which the sound of the sea never stops—Gabriela Carmona honors hundreds of grieving mothers, submerging their sorrow within the sea. There in that room, against the dynamic nature of the screen, lies a flat steel railway, an empty weapon incapable of hiding its own guilt. Its rigid stillness contrasts with the sea's perpetual motion, appearing as the corpse of a heavyweight absence—silent, unchanging, and burdened by history.
Across the railway’s body, the words "you won’t come back” symbolically add to the object's burden. The phrase mimics the video in written form, taken from a verse in an absence poem read by the artist. In the poem, the wind whispers that her brother was not going to come back—a possibility that still leaves room for doubt. But once the words are engraved in acid, that uncertainty disappears; the phrase turns into a definitive statement. This awareness binds the artist to grieving mothers, whose pain, like acid on metal, burns into permanence.
HOPSCOTCH
“I don’t want to make love again with anyone.” The statement is written in the middle of an Encarnapieles sketch, drawn in the lower left-hand corner of one of the 15 copybook sheets covering the walls of a museum room. Each sheet is slightly folded in the middle, separating the image from a second statement that echoes the one inside the figure. The sketch depicts the proportional drawing of what became one of the first garments in 2022, created for a performance reflecting on violence against women. In that performance, she crafted a series of vêtements similar to those now exhibited at the Museo de la Solidaridad. Back then, however, the pieces were black instead of red, symbolizing the ever-present absence of a loved one.
All of Carmona’s ideas are initially drawn on paper, whether as clear sketches or abstract images inspired by testimony. Some phrases were collected from third parties during a residency the artist undertook in 2017, where she taught an embroidery course. Although she barely knew the technique at the time, Carmona wanted to create a space where women could speak freely and feel safe sharing their experiences. One of the participants, with striking determination, said, "I don’t want to make love again with anyone," leaving a lasting impression on Gabriela, who continues to use the phrase today.
The phrase encompasses multiple dimensions of freedom, adaptable to a variety of situations. In the case of the course participant, she was referring to an abusive relationship, but it could also simply express the sentiment that one doesn't need anyone to love them. This notion of independence fascinated the artist, who had grown up being taught that her Worth was determined solely by the love men gave her. The open-ended nature of the phrase extends to the other papers, which feature contextless statements. My eyes wander across the room, completing half-written sentences, relating their meaning to the nearby drawings. Organic shapes intertwine with free-verse micropoems that, by themselves, defy conventional logic. Despite their apparent randomness, the pages surrounding them offer new interpretations when observed more deeply.
One paper says Te recuerdo antes del día y de la noche (I remember you before day and night), another reads Eres un pájaro marino que se escapa (You are a seabird that escapes). A third states A su alma salvaje y oculta (To their wild and hidden soul) and a fourth, La misma que me acompaña (The same one that accompanies me). My mind lingers on each verse, composing unspoken thoughts that may align with the artist's sensations.
The invented free-verse poems convey deep suffering, and the fact that I can make connections between the material myself personifies the experience. This is precisely the operation the artist performs in her creations, where collective grief is recognized through what may initially seem like anonymization.
Encontrar algún pasado debajo del agua (Discovering a nameless past underneath the water) reads one of the phrases in the copybook sketches. It echoes the action performed by visitors as they explore the scene displayed on a small screen in one of the corners of the room, where the encarnapieles are shown. The video serves as an extension of the purification ritual introduced in the adjacent room: the submersion into a collective narrative woven through the Pacific Ocean. The piece functions as a smaller, more intimate ritual, where we come closer to someone’s heartbeat, gently caressed by the sea waves.
Before our very eyes, Carmona offers us a potent moment of freedom— a space to weep the tears that would only arise when the truth is revealed.
https://aicainternational.news/issue-13