Alka domo

About this title

Alka domo is a performative work that appeals to the feat made by Caupolicán, Mapuche toki elected by his community after completing the challenge of holding a log on his shoulders for two days. Based on this story, and revising references of Caupolicán’s masculine figure, the artist holds a hollow trunk made of “coihue”, a type of ancestral wood from the South of Chile, and seven pairs of high heels each one with one of the colors from the LGBT flag. “Hollow” (“Hueco”, in Spanish) is the derogatory term that Chilean people use to refer to non-heterosexual people, identities that are problematic to the patriarchal system. The chosen places for this performative action represent areas of the official description of the Mapuche subject in Chile, places where the complexity of the interaction between what is Mapuche and what is Chilean is evinced, alongside with territories associated to the artist’s own biography.