Seba Calfuqueo

Courtesy of the artist and W Galería

Seba Calfuqueo (b. 1991, Santiago, Chile) is a Mapuche visual artist and curator of Espacio218. Based in Santiago de Chile, she is a member of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü and of Yene magazine. Calfuqueo’s work draws on her Indigenous cultural heritage as a point of departure to propose a critical reflection on the social, cultural, and political status of the Mapuche subject within contemporary Chilean society, and to make visible the issues surrounding feminism and sexual dissidence.

Seba Calfuqueo’s work is part of the collections of Tate Modern (UK), Centre Pompidou (France), Denver Art Museum (USA), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Argentina), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Spain), KADIST Collection (France), Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul - MAC RS (Brazil), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Chile), and MAC (Chile). Recent participations include the Whitney Biennial (New York, 2024), 22nd Video Brazil Biennial, 34th São Paulo Biennial, 12th Mercosur Biennial, and 22nd Paiz Biennial (Guatemala). Calfuqueo participated in LA ESCUELA___’s AULAS program, where she developed the project La fluidez de los cuerpos [The Fluidity of Bodies] (Guatemala, 2024).

A school without walls

LA ESCUELA___ began in 2021 with a reflection from its artistic director and co-founder, Miguel Braceli, about educational models for social practices and situated learning. This idea of bringing art and education closer to social realities by taking them out into public space became the building block of a project co-developed with the international foundation Siemens Stiftung. From this vision, LA ESCUELA___ was conceived as a “school without walls.”

Rather than operating from a fixed campus or following a predetermined curriculum, this artist-run platform works through a growing hemispheric network of artists, architects, educators, researchers, organizers, independent spaces, and communities. Its projects take shape in different contexts across the Americas, responding to local conditions while creating connections between places and practices.

Since 2022, LA ESCUELA___ has developed more than 45 projects in 13 countries, engaging more than 6,000 participants in online and on-site programs, and collaborating with over 350 artists and thinkers. Its programs include on-site experimental classrooms and online labs, residencies, public art, exhibitions, lectures, workshops, symposia, and research processes. An open-access Library with over 300 essays, interviews, documentation, and pedagogical resources expands this work into a growing alternative critical pensum of Latin American artistic and pedagogical practices.

At the heart of the platform is a commitment to reciprocal exchange: not exporting a model from one place to another, but creating conditions for different forms of knowledge to meet, circulate, and transform one another.