As a visual artist, performer, and LGBTQ+ rights activist, La Chola Poblette creates multimedia works that explore the consequences of the Inquisition, colonization, and global capitalism. She was awarded Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year” prize in 2023.
Installation view “La Chola Poblete: Guaymallén”, PalaisPopulaire 2023. © La Chola Poblete Photo: Mathias Schormann
For her solo exhibition in Germany, La Chola Poblete created a “Church of Drawing,” a sacred space where religious, political, erotic, pop-cultural, and Indigenous motifs and symbols converge into an immersive installation. Central to the exhibition were series of large-scale watercolors, new photographic works, and a sculptural installation.
“With her deeply personal, sometimes brutal yet courageous works, La Chola Poblete develops her own artistic cosmos that touches us all directly and opens up new perspectives on the present. Moreover, she surprises with entirely new thematic and formal strategies – precisely what distinguishes our ‘Artist of the Year’ program,” says Britta Färber, Head of Deutsche Bank’s International Art and Culture Program and curator of the exhibition.
In the exhibition, La Chola Poblete narrated stories of martyrs and divine action, but from a standpoint of self-empowerment, healing, and subversive appropriation.
La Chola Poblete: Guaymallén was on view until June 2024. Watch a video of the exhibition here.
La Chola Poblete, Maria & papas lays, 2023. Exhibition La Chola Poblete: Guaymallén. Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2023. © La Chola Poblete Photo: Mathias Schormann
Born in 1989 in Guaymallén, a municipality in northwestern Argentina at the foot of the Andes, La Chola Poblete's exhibition pays homage to her roots and her youth as a non-binary, Indigenous teenager.
Left: La Chola Poblete, Barroco Andino, 2023, Watercolor on paper, 200 x 152 cm. © La Chola Poblete. Right: La Chola Poblete, Virgen del Carmen de Cuyo, 2023, Watercolor, acrylic, and ink colors on paper, 200 x 152 cm. © La Chola Poblete
La Chola Poblete, Virgen de la leche, 2023, Photograph, 152 x 160 cm, © La Chola Poblete
La Chola Poblete: Sin título, 2023Aquarell, Acryl, Tinte und Farben auf Papier / Watercolor, acrylic, ink, and Colors on paper, 65 x 50 cm© La Chola Poblete
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