Cueca Chora

Title: Cueca Chora

Year: 2007

Measures: Variables

Technique: Video MiniDV (color, sound). Record of performance. Collaboration with The Vinellis and Juan Luis Dörr. Cameras: Thomas Elgueta, Anthony Hamboussi, Edition: Francisca Benitez

Duration: 1’51”

Edition: 1/5

This action took place at the foot of the volcano on The Slab, in the Maule region, in the high Andes, where the artist performed the national dance of chile, the cueca, with a huaso mounted on his horse as part of the celebration, created by the local community, to honor several muleteers who died the previous winter in the harsh storms. In the feast and in the action, Benitez, who grew up in the chilean countryside and took part of a folk group of the school in his childhood, is reunited with a horse after 20 years, in a ritual that is also healing from the trauma caused by the attack of a horse when he was 14 years old. This video and its circularity speaks of several circles, and its problematic relations: the cueca, the return to the origin, the circle of the crescent, the division of social classes with their tight circles, and traditional gender roles cemented in the patriarchal system.