“Todo lo que vive necesita caricia.” / “Everything that lives needs cuddles”
— Gabriela Mistral. Chilean Nobel Prize in Literature.
Latin America is a region that has learned to resist with its hands. Apapachar is a term from Nahuatl that means to hug, cuddle, or embrace someone with affection but beyond a simple physical touch, it is poetically defined as “caressing with the soul”. In this exhibition is a verb that has been kneaded, woven, painted, and repeated like a prayer and a love gesture. Un apapacho is to embrace until time stands still, to suspend the noise of the world to care for what trembles: memory, love, body and soul.
This exhibition brings together a group of Latin American women who create from kindness and tenderness as a political force. In ceramics, clay becomes skin; in embroidery, thread sutures what history has torn apart; in painting and screen printing, caresses take shape and colour; in installation, the space itself opens up like an embrace. Each work is a refuge where the material recalls its tactile origin.
Hands not only produce, but they also protect, heal, and summon. Here, art is not meant to just be contemplated; it is created to be felt, to accompany and contain. This exhibition is a constellation of gestures that resist oblivion, a fabric of presences that claim the right to kindness. In times of haste, uprootedness and individualism, un apapacho is an act of resistance, a way of saying we are here for you, holding up the world with our hands.
About the Artists
In 2021, we founded Sur-Collective out of a need to create a sense of place and redefine the space we use as migrant women and artists in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We are 5 Latin American artists working in different artistic disciplines such as sculpture, drawing, painting, ceramics, photography, printmaking, and textile art in all of it forms.
We use art to create new experiences, connect with other communities, and collaborate in the construction of unique, diverse, and inclusive spaces. Our north is the south, and these are our cardinal points:
• Community, our place
• Art, our tool
• Education, our medium
• Affection, our language
Members of Sur-Collective:
Juliana Durán (Colombia) – Visual artist who explores the creation of objects and experimentation of mediums for her creative practice.
Romina Ortega (Chile) – Visual artist who works with screen printing, engraving, drawing and tattooing.
Jesu Vasquez-Lesser (Chile) – Transdisciplinary visual artist with a strong interest in painting, puppetry, textile art, and education.
Catherine Guevara (Colombia) – Ceramicist, her body of work comprises education, research, drawing and ceramics.
Lina Castro (Colombia) – Industrial Designer and embroidery artist. She explores ways to expand embroidery beyond the hoop.
