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The quilineja is a thin root that grows around trees in humid forests, like many which are found in Chiloé. It slowly ascends, climbing, encircling, and gently wrapping itself around the trees, reaching heights of thirteen meters or more. After a long pause, it slowly reverses its movement, gradually returning from where it appeared, and eventually disappears back into the earth.
Raquel Aguilar makes regular excursions to the Incopuy forest near Quellón to collect quilinejas. After bringing them home, the roots are washed, boiled, and left to dry, after which they become pliable to human hands. From there, the quilineja can be braided into a durable rope, one of which Aguilar has been working on continually for the past few months. It must be especially long because it appears in the current exhibition as an animated tendril, extending from the adjacent forest toward the chapel, approaching from above, and silently inching its way to the interior.
Once inside, the rope reaches the arms and limbs of the Cai coi (Huilliche), a three-meter-tall forest woman, and integrates itself with her physical structure. A universal symbol of the origin of life itself, the cai coi is both woman and forest, the eternal source from which all living flora and fauna emerge into the material world, making it visible and tangible. Her headdress is adorned by winter swallows that seem to lift the quilineja strands towards the ceiling, adding an aura of ambiguity to the forest woman, a suggestion that the rope is also a means to escape the chapel, when the time comes to return to her forest.
Texto por Dan Cameron y Ramón Castillo




















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