In a historic milestone for Chilean poetry and literature, the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, and the Buenos Aires Legislature, through Law No. 6422 enacted on June 3, 2021, authorised the construction In Plaza Chile of that city, a tribute monument to commemorative Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, Gonzalo Rojas and Nicanor Parra, made by the Chilean visual artist Catalina Swinburn.

“My practice has always been linked to the word, through investigations about historical narratives, to create sculptures, installation, tapestries and investitures starting from documentations primarily from classic archives. I try to recover ancestral rituals related to sacred places, ancestral geography, and memory of origin. ‘Open Book’ centres on investigating ritual and worship spaces and bringing this experience to the visitor: with interest in delivering themes of identity, community, belonging and reunion. I thought about this work of art in homage to these six renowned poets, but also in a homage to every person that habits and experiments the poetics when inhabiting the sculpture.”

As a habitable open book, the sculpture, built-in travertine marble, tries to bring the viewer and visitor closer to the public space, living the poetry. The social and historical area is inhabited as the cosmic space of nature, memory, and projects.

The sculpture’s construction resembles the shape of a tesseract, obtained from combining two cubes, which is geometry is also known as a hypercube. A particular geometrical figure shows a possible fourth dimensión which is the space where the conscience or essence inhabits every conscious body. In spirituality, the fourth dimension is where we can find the state of free consciousness.

Open Book, 2022
Travertine Marble
350x350x350 cm
Públic Space Pavillion
Unveiling March 9th
Plaza Chile, Buenos Aires Argentina