Situated Practices, Feminist Archives, and Bodies in Struggle
By Kekena Corvalán
In conversation with Kekena Corvalan for The Unruled Column, Mane Adaro reflects on her curatorial path, noting that her entry into the field wasn’t just through formal training but through her art and photography practice. She sees curating as a dynamic process of learning and adapting to the moment. She shares her long-standing collaboration with Eugenia Vargas-Pereira, which began in 2018 with a project on women artists. They later collaborated on a book about Vargas-Pereira’s work, where Adaro sought to move beyond a chronological narrative and focus on key ideas shaped by feminism and the body. Adaro discusses how their show at the MNBA highlighted Vargas-Pereira’s critiques of patriarchy and ecology, including the powerful 1986 photo-performance in which Vargas-Pereira engaged with animal viscera. The conversation also explores the role of Latin American and Chilean art in the global context, as well as the challenges of feminist research today, emphasizing the need for intersectional, decolonial, and anti-speciesist perspectives.
Eugenia Vargas-Pereira. Photo-performance, 1977, Mexico. Work included in the book Eugenia Vargas-Pereira: Selected Works 1977–2020. Atlas Publishing, 2022.
How did you enter the curatorial field, and through what kind of training or experience? And how has your collaboration with Eugenia Vargas-Pereira been, particularly in Volver a nombrar? I understand you have been working together for some time.
My entry into curatorial work stems from my practice in art and photography, as well as formal curatorial studies; however, I do not see academic training as the most relevant aspect. It helps, of course, but for me, curating is a continuous negotiation: a space of learning and alertness, attuned to narrative, spatial dynamics, and the urgency of the present moment.
That is precisely what happened with Eugenia Vargas-Pereira. Our collaboration has been fluid and organic, beginning in 2018 when I was invited to participate in a project of short documentaries on women artists. I remember Eugenia was one of the first names I proposed. Later, we had the opportunity to go deeper in a book about her work. That project made me realize that a chronological narrative would not do justice to her practice. Instead, I wanted to build a constellation of strong ideas shaped by her feminism and engagement with the body.
So, when Varinia Brodsky from the MNBA invited us to curate a show, it was clear to me that we needed to amplify Eugenia’s early concerns—her commitment to ecology and nature and, more broadly, her critique of patriarchal culture and violence. The museum space allowed us to transition from images of the body—joyful, critical—to others anchored in memory, as well as visually arresting pieces, such as her 1986 photo performance, in which Eugenia posed with animal viscera used for human consumption. Including that piece was vital for both of us. It shows her early engagement with the problem of speciesism, addressed through a feminist lens.
We also included work from 1991 that reflected on the collective and ecological body. In it, Eugenia critically examined her role as an analog photographer—a subject not exactly popular but one that allowed her to explore the material implications of image-making about her everyday life.
Eugenia Vargas-Pereira. Untitled, 1979–1986 [12 photographs, 80 x 60 cm each]. Installation view at MNBA. Image: MNBA
How do you see the contemporary art field today, and how do Latin American and Chilean art practices inscribe themselves within it?
I have always viewed Latin American art as radically avant-garde. Just read Andrea Giunta, and you will see how central the region has become in developing global art histories. The same applies to Chilean art. As for inscription, we all know how that game is played—how visibility is negotiated, who gets included, and who remains outside. Who gets silenced?
So yes, I am pretty critical—especially now, as we witness how the world is being reorganized, how voices are being erased, borders enforced, and narratives controlled. That said, returning to your question, I think Latin American and Chilean art is filled with artists whose work is not just relevant but truly exceptional.
Eugenia Vargas-Pereira. Aguas (Santiago, 2024). [Video, part of the installation Aguas. Cleaning of the Mapocho River in collaboration with a community of women activists.] Image: MNBA
What do you think are the key challenges for feminist research today, in a context increasingly shaped by anti-rights, anti-feminist, anti-planetary reactions?
If I had to distill it, I would say feminist perspectives are more urgent than ever. One of the most significant challenges in feminist research today is understanding how epistemic violence, produced by racist supremacism, intersects with anthropocentrism, homophobia, and other structures of domination.
The violence you mention does not come out of nowhere; it is rooted in a patriarchal culture whose aesthetic and economic models are currently being driven by techno-capitalist intersections: the exploitation of vulnerable communities, land dispossession, ecocide, and mass animal death, especially of female animals, bred to exhaustion for industrial consumption.
This is why I believe in intersectional, decolonial, and anti-speciesist frameworks. What we are witnessing is a patriarchal machine fueled by the blood of others—human and nonhuman—mobilized through an economic and corporate apparatus that erodes human rights, builds walls, and enables genocides like the one in Gaza. So, yes, the challenge is enormous: to grasp the scale of this violence and build communities and forms of resistance grounded in intersectional knowledge and solidarity.
Eugenia Vargas-Pereira. (Mexico 1991 – Santiago 2024) Aguas. [Installation with light bulbs, developing trays, water, and photographs created in collaboration with a community of women activists.] Image: MNBA
Mane Adaro is a Chilean researcher and curator specializing in art and photography. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Universidad Finis Terrae (Santiago, ANID/Conicyt Scholarship), with research focused on the cultural field and the world of the Animal Industrial Complex. During the military dictatorship, she worked as a press photographer between 1984 and 1988. Later, after living in Brussels, she returned to Latin America, settling in Bogotá, Managua, and Maturín—places that profoundly shaped her worldview, particularly through living and connecting with people and groups dedicated to studying and caring for nature.
Upon returning to Chile, she founded Atlas Imaginarios Visuales magazine in 2014 to foster intersections between photography, art, philosophy, and feminism—mainly featuring texts by women authors. As director of Atlas, she organized the international seminar and publication Political and Gender Violence in Latin America: Critical Representations from Art and Photography (2017), which brought together voices from art, curating, activism, and philosophy.
As a researcher and curator, her interests have focused on the work of women artists, archives, materiality, and the study of relationships between the body, technology, and modernity.
