Chilean artist Paula Valenzuela Antúnez returns to Santiago with What Does Death Dream?, a solo exhibition that brings together a new series of large-format abstract paintings. Curated by Camila Alegría Zenteno and Daniel Aguayo Mozó, the show explores transformation, death, and spirituality through color, gesture, and material. More than representing death literally, the works propose thinking of it as a transition and a mystery, where each disappearance can also give way to a new image.
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The exhibition marks Valenzuela’s return to the Santiago scene after several years of circulation and residence outside Chile. The artist, who lived for seven years in Buenos Aires, has developed part of her career in cities such as Berlin and Paris, where she has held exhibitions and residencies, and has also presented her work in Miami.
The exhibition will also have a program of activities including mediations and poetry reading meetings with Milagros Abalo Cea. There will also be a conversation about spirituality and internal transformation with actress Fernanda Urrejola, one of the creators of the series The House of the Spirits. Her participation is no coincidence: Urrejola has a large-format work by Paula Valenzuela in her collection, and both have shared a conversation group around these themes for some time, which also permeate the exhibition.
What Does Death Dream? will also be part of SAFA, the first Santiago Art Week, a new festival that will bring together more than 150 cultural spaces in the capital.
Where? Galería CIMA, Merced 22, 11th floor, Santiago.
When? Saturday, August 22, Thursday, August 27, and Tuesday, September 1, from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Entry: Free, with prior registration.
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The exhibition Your Ghosts Are Mine. Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices proposes that the stories of peoples and communities who have faced situations of war, displacement, or transnational crossings cease to be foreign the moment a viewer confronts them on screen. The title, taken from a dialogue in Zanj Revolution, a feature film by Algerian director Tariq Teguia, lends its voice to a question that runs through the entire exhibition: to what extent can the memory and ghosts of others become our own?
Produced by Qatar Museums and co-organized with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the Doha Film Institute, and the future Art Mill Museum – also in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile – the exhibition curated by Matthieu Orléan, artistic collaborator of the Cinémathèque française, arrives for the first time in Latin America as a legacy of the successful Years of Culture program alliance between Qatar and Chile. With more than 40 film excerpts and installations by artists and filmmakers from the Arab world, Africa, and Southeast Asia, the exhibition presented in 2024 at the Palazzo Franchetti in Venice during the 60th International Art Biennale now lands at the La Moneda Cultural Center.
“We are interested in the public being able to approach stories, imaginaries, and experiences that come from other contexts,” says Alejandra Valenzuela Oyanedel, executive director of the La Moneda Cultural Center.
The exhibition is organized into eight sections: Deserts, Ruins, Borders, Exile, Futurism, Cosmos, Fires, and Ghost, and brings together works by more than 40 artists and filmmakers, including Shirin Neshat, Ali Cherri, Sophia Al Maria, and Ahmad Saleh. An opportunity to approach cinema and video art from other geographies and perspectives.
Where? Pacific Room, level -3 of the La Moneda Cultural Center.
When? Until October 11, 2026, Tuesday to Sunday, between 10:15 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Entry: Free.
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Although exhibited in Buenos Aires, Metamorphosis of the Garden is also a show that speaks about Chile. The exhibition is presented at the MATTA Cultural Center – located in the Chilean Embassy in Argentina and the only cultural space of the Chilean State abroad – and brings together three artists from different backgrounds in a proposal that seeks to strengthen dialogue and exchange between the artistic scenes of Chile and Argentina.
The show transforms its rooms into a universe of forests, flowers, textiles, and organic forms through the works of Guillermina Lynch, from Argentina; Irina Khatsernova, from Russia; and Chilean artist Rita Soto Ventura. The question that runs through the entire journey is what new ways of relating to nature can art imagine today.
And each artist tries a different answer. Lynch builds a walkable forest made up of eight large velvet tapestries that visitors can touch, where trees, fish, branches, and orchids appear. Behind the panels, the roots turn into words through fragments of the poem Roots by Gabriela Mistral, incorporating one of the fundamental voices of Chilean literature into the journey.
Irina Khatsernova, meanwhile, works with mosses, stones, branches, flowers, and other organic materials to create a living installation that will change during the days the exhibition lasts. And Rita Soto Ventura takes that relationship with nature to the body through contemporary jewelry pieces made with micro-weaving in horsehair and fibers, crossing art, design, and craftsmanship.
As a closing of the exhibition, on Thursday, August 27 at 6:00 p.m., there will also be a lecture by philosopher and writer Sofía Di Scala, author of the wall text, who will address from philosophy, literature, and art history the different ways we have imagined our relationship with nature.
Where? MATTA Cultural Center, Chilean Embassy in Argentina. Tagle corner Av. del Libertador, Buenos Aires. Entrance through Plaza República de Chile.
When? From August 14 to 28, Tuesday to Saturday, between 12:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
Entry: Free and open to the public.
