Carmen Castillo, the experience of exile

On September 11, 1973, Chile witnessed a coup that overthrew the legitimate government of the Popular Unity chaired by Salvador Allende. With the establishment of General Pinochet's regime, the history of thousands of Chileans exiled due to the Pinochet dictatorship began, a figure ranging from 800,000 to 1,000,000. Carmen Castillo was one of these exiles. Documentary filmmaker and writer, she was expelled from her country on October 26 and thus began her long exile. At the beginning of his exile, he moved closer to documentary film in France, starting in the eighties. Works such as La flaca Alejandra (1994), El país del meu padre (2002) and, above all, Carrer Santa Fe (2007) show a committed work that has always been based on historical reflection, accompanied by a melancholy and sincere poetic.

The exhibition presented by the Carmen Castillo Museum of Exile: A Chilean Exile, curated by Imma Merino, investigates Carmen Castillo's specific experience as an exile through texts and fragments of films, as well as photographs, documents and other testimonial texts, which bring us to the present stories that have been silenced and forgotten. "There are as many exiles as there are exiles, and in the exile of each one there are several," says Castillo. This diversity of visions, experiences and lives is transferred to the material that makes up the sample. In this fragmentation inherent in multiple and diverse stories, Carmen Castillo continues to think about the experience and significance of exile. Avoiding objective interpretations and closed narratives seems the best tool to bring the past to the present. The fragility and bias of the stories reveal the difficulties of reconstructing an experience, but at the same time they involve a wealth of voices that provide a kaleidoscopic view of exile.