Seba Calfuqueo

Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1991, Seba Calfuqueo is a Mapuche artist and curator based in Santiago. Her practice draws on her cultural heritage and lived experience as a starting point for critically examining the social, cultural, and political dynamics surrounding the Mapuche subject in contemporary Chilean and Latin American society. Working across performance, installation, ceramics, and video, she explores the similarities and differences between Indigenous worldviews and Western thought, as well as the stereotypes and colonial structures that emerge from their intersection. Her work engages with feminism, gender studies, and environmental rights from a First Nations perspective grounded in embodied knowledge. She questions anthropocentric approaches to the landscape and examines the relationship between humans and what is understood as nature, seeking to challenge the separation between these concepts and to propose alternative ways of understanding their coexistence. Through research and a diverse range of visual techniques and strategies, Calfuqueo addresses questions of identity, colonialism, gender, and the relationship between culture and nature. Her work is held in the collections of Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Denver Art Museum, MALBA, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, KADIST, Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul – MAC RS, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile, and MAC Chile. She has participated as an invited artist in the Venice Biennale (2024), Whitney Biennial (2024), 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021), 12th Mercosur Biennial (2020), and 22nd Paiz Biennial (2020). Calfuqueo has received awards from the FAVA Foundation (2018), Eyebeam’s Fractal Fellowships Program (2020), Fundación Ama Amoedo’s FAARA (2023), and the Cuervo Award at Zona Maco (2024).