Patricia IsraelAuthor(s): Luis CamnitzerSource: Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 4, Latin American Art (Winter, 1992), p. 10Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777274 .

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Patricia Israel CHILE

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Patricia Israel, Chilean Codex I, from The Painted Body of America series, 1985, acrylic and oil on canvas, 35? x 35? inches. Collection of the artist.

I try to place myself within "savage thought," to feel the amazement and consternation experienced as a result of the arrival of the "whites," which entailed the use of force to obtain the delivery of riches and power, destroying millenary cultures, using the Gospels and the supposed "lack of soul" of the indigenous peoples to legitimize conquest, usurpation, and pillage. One cannot speak of an "Encounter" when what is met is despised and destroyed, and the vision of a world conceived in a different space and tradition is implanted. To

regain memory is to establish and to recognize our difference, to distinguish "white" from "nonwhite," "official" from "unof- ficial." The attempt must be made to "see" the indigenous world in spite of five hundred years of distortions. I try to achieve my vision with a limited palette: black, white, earth

colors, and gold and silver in thin layers as a sign of mediat-

ing greed. These serve my purposes better than the exuber-

ant colorism by which we are often identified and distorted. From the southern part of the continent I seek to learn

the mystery, not the magic, that envelops America. For the human beings that inhabited this continent, men, animals, and nature were one, and they continue to be one. Unlike the

Europeans, they did not divide them into stratas. These are the vital presences I try to rescue in my paintings. This is not the nostalgic vision of a mythified past-greed has been

permanent-but the process of capturing a memory, of not

forgetting, which both haunts and stimulates us. 4

PATRICIA ISRAEL, a painter and printmaker, has exhibited in Latin America, the United States, and Europe. In exile

during the Pinochet dictatorship, today she represents Chile in

many international exhibitions.

WINTER 1992

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