Labor is pleased to announce “There Is No Paradise Without Snakes”, the first individual exhibition by 34-year-old Chilean artist, Claudia Gutiérrez Marfull. A show that completes her double project, the first part of which has just been presented by AFA gallery during Gallery Weekend Santiago (“There Is No Sky Without Clouds”) and for which she was chosen as the best emerging artist.

The use of proverbs to title her exhibitions is already an indicator of the artist's willingness to flee from art as an institution and to vindicate the relegated, the despised, the secondary or the discarded and -at the same time- embrace the simplicity of the popular, the craft that escapes techno-industrial dictation, joy and beauty. There is no sky without clouds, nor paradise without snakes makes reference to the lack of absolute happiness- pointing out that everything has both joy and sadness.

These two exhibitions were comprised by the representation of the peripheric landscape through the technique of embroidery and textile- areas commonly neglected by the establishment and which the media only makes visible to stain with the stigma of marginality and violence, without taking into account that people who inhabit these spaces are the ones who allow the wealth of the urban center with their hard work, and who have to alleviate their precariousness by weaving generous networks of solidarity.

Weaving is converging, crossing threads, intermingling, intertwining. Claudia Gutiérrez claims embroidery as a fabric of meanings and as materiality. Embroidery was an activity for women relegated to the domestic sphere. However, the most recent history of embroidery in Chile has acquired a character of protest and political claim. In 1962, Violeta Parra (poet, singer and artist) produced a series of arpilleras that mirrored her concern for the current socio-political situation at that time, particularly marked by the Cuban missile crisis and the celebration of the Second Vatican Council- and by her struggle to rescue the Mapuche culture (with the magical ceremonies of the small weavers) and to advocate for a more united Latin America. In 1964 she made this tradition know worldwide with her exhibition at the Louvre: “Violeta Parra’s Tapestries”, where she showed -through 22 arpilleras- that the bright, cheerful and striking colors actually disclosed a sad and desolate social context. She was not the only one to overthrow embroidery as a mere female chore; The Arpilleristas Lo Hermida, held workshops for women to have a livelihood through embroidery after the military coup of 1973, and faced with the need of many families to get an income. In these drawings, women began to embroider scenes from stories ignored by the official media, incorporating stories about the repression, destruction and brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship. This way, the action of gathering in order to concoct the arpilleras became an emotional catharsis.

Similarly, Claudia Gutiérrez Marfull, born on the outskirts of Santiago, Puente Alto, comes from a family of women who have worked with textiles, making it a constant in her life and cultural environment, but from which she transcends. The artist embroiders scenes and situations that are not usually captured with this type of technique and materiality; particularly, situations that are experienced in the streets of some of the most vulnerable areas of Chile, embroideries of a disturbing beauty: graffiti, landscapes of post-urban ruin. Although these images respond to the national context, the conflicts that they represent are universally recognizable; pointing out places forsaken by the State and citizens exiled from their citizenship.