Cristobal Cea S.
Cristobal Cea (1981) is a Chilean artist and educator whose work focuses on the relation between digital media, history and memory: through his multidisciplinary practice, he mixes digital media and archives as a way to re-examine forgotten histories, in an intent to dismantle the persistence of the mistakes of the past in the present.
Works such as Hawker Haunted, Fuente de Juventud or Seguidores del Diluvio critically address issues such as the persistence of fascist ideology in contemporary Chile, the inconsistencies of mixing democracy with neoliberal policies, and the decolonization of public space using 3D-Scanning as a way of imagining alternative futures.
His work has been exhibited internationally in venues including Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Microscope Gallery, Ars Electronica, National Museum of Fine Arts (Chile), Lund Konsthal, Sala Alcalá, and the Museum of Fine Arts of Chile. He has also been a resident artist at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Kohler Arts/Industry Program, and received recognitions such as the Fulbright Fellowship, Goethe Institut 18O Grant, MAVI Emerging Art Award, UC Artistic Research Grant, and RISD Bridge Academic Research Grant.
I work with different mediums, from 3D animation to oil painting: probably because I don’t believe in rigid disciplinary and conceptual boundaries. I consider artmaking to be a materially and conceptually diverse practice, and navigating the continuum between digital and analog practices is something that I enjoy immensely.
My work is rooted within the historical ambiguities and fluid boundaries that characterize my personal story and the experience of being a Chilean artist: a country abundant in myths, minerals, unspoken grievances, traditions, and habits that seem really hard to break or even understand.
As if we were somehow haunted.
My artworks are intent on dispersing this hidden spell: unwinding media bias and ritual violence in Glorias, animating the ever-present specter of fascist violence in Hawker Haunted, or conjuring the contradictions of democratic transition through the voice of an overwhelmed, transitional human in Followers of the Flood.
Currently, I am working on America Imaginaria: a digital media installation where imaginary monsters from Latin American history occupy a (non-profit) art institution, and discuss the unimaginable tragedy of being at once monster and ghost: fake news from the XVIth century with effects still visible today.