[PCdV], August 22 – September 26, 2026 (Valparaíso, Chile)
Exhibition IRA_ESPERANZA_FRUSTRACIÓN
Curated by Christian Castro

3D-printed PLA / Installation of flags with LED masts
Edition 1/2

Three black flags hang on the wall. Each is literally a 3D-printed flag that freezes a mechanical, rigid ripple in place, assembled with bolts and screws onto a structure printed through the same process, and hangs from a mast—an LED tube, the only luminous element in these pieces—anchored to the wall. The texts appear cut directly into the fabric: letters carved out that let light pass through, producing an effect of inscription, as if the words had been perforated into a metal plate.

The three texts are the Party's slogans from George Orwell's 1984, translated into German:

KRIEG IST FRIEDEN / FREIHEIT IST SKLAVEREI / UNWISSENHEIT IST STÄRKE
(War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength)

The choice of German is not linguistic but historical. Chile has a German presence running through its culture and politics since the nineteenth century, with episodes ranging from the colonization of the country's south to military and political ties with Nazism extending into the twentieth century. That genealogy—at times documented, at times buried—did not end with the postwar period: the escape routes that brought officers and collaborators of the regime to South America installed a descendance that, over time, learned to inherit impunity along with surname and estate. Translating Orwell's slogans into German is a way of pointing to that continuity without naming it: the language does the work. What in 1945 was believed to be defeat revealed itself, in many cases, as an exile with privileges, capable of reproducing itself generation after generation in the renewed language of the contemporary far right.

The black of the flags also functions as a visual discourse in its own right. Black is the color of mourning, of absence, of censorship. But when it appears on a flag—and black flags are rare within the conventional vexillology of states—its meaning takes on a different kind of charge: that of far-right movements that refuse to recognize the existing order. These flags produce an instinctive panic. Here, that panic is part of the work.

Photography courtesy of: Carlos Silva & Cristian Maturana

All pieces printed by: Studio Maipa

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