What We Inherited

For the better part of the year, I have been living in Santiago, a city currently gripped by an archival fever in its local arts community. It started in 2005 with the founding of the Centro de Documentación de las Artes Visuales del Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo, which made archives from the dictatorial era (1973–90) available for the first time. The fever intensified in 2010 when the Centre digitised its collection. A slew of private and public institutions followed suit. These spaces have fuelled the appetite of younger artists, curators, and art historians who came of age in the post-dictatorship period and sought to wrestle the past they inherited. Santiago’s archive fever is driven by the desire to trace and imagine local art history, manifesting in dozens of books, exhibitions, and artworks.