In September and October 2022, Fernanda Olivares, an activist, and Nicolás Spencer,
an artist, both from Chile, came to Vienna for two weeks to conduct research at the
Weltmuseum Wien. The aim of their visit was to develop work for Extinctions!?, an
experimental exhibition, which opened at Weltmuseum Wien in February 2023, as
part of the TAKING CARE project. Olivares and Spencer worked with objects from
the Selk’nam, an Indigenous group, living in the Argentinean and Chilean Tierra del
Fuego. The Selk’nam, which is the group to which Olivares belongs, are a recognized
minority in Argentina, while in Chile they are considered extinct. The Selk’nam objects
that Olivares and Spencer would engage with were collected by the missionary
Martin Gusinde between 1923 and 1927.
This project forms part of the wider efforts for an analysis of the relation between objects
and their environment in the context of extinction that is made in the works of
Olivares and Spencer. For example, Olivares’ community, the Covadonga Ona, are currently
campaigning to be recognized under Chile’s Indigenous Development and Protection
Law. The aim of their work with the museum was to re-establish a relationship
between the objects of the past and the people in the present, while intervening in the
discourse of extinction that surrounds the group.
The following text is based on a conversation between Fernanda Olivares and Nicolás
Spencer and the TAKING CARE team that took place during their stay in Vienna. While
remaining close to what was said in the course of the conversation, the text has been
edited for clarity.
Spaces of Care – Confronting Colonial Afterlives in European Ethnographic Museums
DOI: 10.14361/9783839468487