Cristian Ordóñez
in Matapédia
EXHIBITION
Valle
Cristian Ordóñez, Toronto, Ontario | cristianordonez.com
“Once Chile recovered its democracy, in 1990, a remarkable process of western-style development (Moore, 1966) began that led to macroeconomic progress (The World Bank, 2021) but at the same time left many communities across the country behind (Siavelis, 2010).
“The Huasco Valley is one of those places. The Valley is formed by four communities with a total population of about 72,000 people distributed along 150 kilometers from the ocean to the Andes. Its main economic activity by far is mining, with one of the highest GDP per capita among regions in Chile (INE, n.d.), but still with many unresolved socio-environmental issues (INDH, n.d.). Although the Valley has been subject to the development of industrial and mining projects for years (Bolados-García et al., 2021), emblematic projects have been cancelled due to public pressure and the companies’ poor socioenvironmental practices, despite being approved by authorities. Some of the impacts of these projects include high levels of heavy metals, intolerable odors, pollution of the local sea and long-lasting sediments in the Huasco River (Insunza, 2015; Myllyvirta et al., 2020; Vargas Aceituno, 2014).
“Under this troubling scenario of development, investment, justice and distrust, conflicts appear due to the unfair distribution of social and environmental ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ that threaten the communities’ health, livelihood and social identities (Scheidel et al., 2020). Industrial territorial interventions, while creating employment, paying taxes and benefiting the local economy, also bring negative externalities that affect people’s ways of living: they hardly distribute economic benefits equally, and governments usually behave unilaterally (Amengual, 2018).
“This work focuses on those communities and their territories with the aim of understanding their rationale of development and the role that multinationals play in it. After visiting the Valley, talking to its citizens and photographing its diverse landscape, we found a sensation of uncertainty and abandonment, and our work reflects the visible and invisible, the ephemeral and permanent, the transformations, adaptations, relationships and intertwined conflicts existing across the Valley.” –Eduardo Ordonez-Ponce, PhD, Associate Professor, Athabasca University
EXHIBITION AT RENCONTRES
Valle (Valley)
Cristian Ordóñez is a Chilean artist based in Toronto. His work explores the parallels between ideas such as memory and belonging, territory and architecture, vernacular and mundane. These themes are presented through the photographing of landscape, urban structures, portraiture and abstraction.
In recent years, Cristian’s work has won the Burtynsky Grant (Canada) and the Urbanautica Institute Award (Italy). His series Frequency was nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (Germany) and was recently exhibited in a solo show at Galería Animal (Chile). His work On Trial, published by acb-press (Australia), is part of collections that include the National Gallery of Canada, the National Library of Australia and the Gabriela Cendoya Bergareche Collection at the San Telmo Museum (Spain).
Ordóñez has led workshops and courses at VU Photo, OCAD University, and Gallery 44, and currently divides his time between work on his photography and publications, editing and designing with his publisher Another Earth, and collaborating with architects, academics, publishers, and artists.