Artist Statement: Indigenous Virgin

Marjorie “Gigi” Peñailillo (Turronas Crew), Virgen Negra (2010), graffiti mural, Santa Inés, Viña del Mar, Chile.

Marjorie Peñailillo (Gigi) is a visual artist, a professional graffiti writer, and a master printmaker. She holds degrees in education, art, and printmaking from the School of Fine Arts in Viña del Mar and the University of Viña del Mar in Chile. Additionally, Gigi is cofounder of one of the few all-female graffiti crews in Chile, the Turronas Crew. She also participated in the multidisciplinary urban culture project called Cultura Urbana Chilena. Gigi has organized and led a series of graffiti workshops for children and young adults in Chile, in collaboration with the Culture and Arts Council and the country’s Office for the Protection of Children and Youth Rights.

She has taken part in diverse graffiti events in Chile and elsewhere in South America, including the international graffiti summit Concegraff in Concepción, Chile (2006–12). She also taught a workshop for the Second Youth Festival in Fortaleza, Brazil (2011). Prior to these activities Gigi served as a juror for the “1er Encuentro Internacional Caída y Limpia” (First international encounter fall and clean) in Quito, Ecuador (2009), and participated as a guest artist in the First International Graffiti Encounter, where she contributed to the creation of the Muro por La Paz (Wall of peace) in Arequipa, Peru, and Santiago, Chile (2009). The Wall of Peace was a collaborative graffiti and mural project that brought together dozens of artists from Chile and abroad to paint images on the subjects of peace and nonviolence.

Gigi’s work has been exhibited in various important venues. Together with the Veie Crew, she exhibited her short film Documentary 777: Graffiti and Urban Culture as part of her thesis for the University of Viña del Mar. Her work was also featured in the first exhibition of women graffiti artists in the Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano (ChileanNorth American Institute) in Valparaiso and at the Fine Arts Museum in Viña del Mar, both in Chile. Moreover, Gigi’s work has graced the pages of numerous important graffiti arts publications, such as Rod Palmer’s monograph Street Art Chile (England), C.O.P. Magazine (Australia), and Negativos Graffiti Art Magazine (Spain).

The themes and images in Gigi’s work focus on diverse icons associated with Latin American indigenous identity. Most notable is her use of Pre-Columbian aesthetic resources and symbolism from the Valdivia and Moche cultures in Ecuador and Peru, respectively. She is also influenced by the syncretism of Chilean and Bolivian religious festivities such as the carnivals of La Tirana and Oruro. Her search for an artistic identity makes of her work a constant mutation that brings together diverse fragments of cultures absorbed in her numerous trips throughout South America searching for a contemporary vision to be reflected in her prints and graffiti creations.

Gigi’s images reproduced in this issue of Frontiers are from two walls of a graffiti mural she painted in the neighborhood of Santa Inés in Viña del Mar. These two hybrid virgins are mountain deities who represent fertility and the indigenous presence in colonial art. This graffiti mural was also part of Gigi’s thesis project, which focused on the role of graffiti and the urban arts in community building. The Pachamama or mother earth featured on the cover of Frontiers is the powerful Andean goddess who presides over planting, harvesting, and the earth’s reproductive cycles. Gigi has depicted her here as a nature spirit whose mantle is made of butterflies that give rise to other life forms on earth.

For more information on Gigi’s art, see the following sites:

www.flickr.com/gigigraff

http://www.facebook.com/pages/TURRONAScrew/116338465104225

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM8I6MwgXrk