Pedro Gramegna Ardiles

Memento Mori

Chilean Pavilion for the Exhibition of Countries and Regions, 15th edition of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, 2023

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Two years ago, one of our most beloved and important mentors died unexpectedly during the pandemic. 

«Memento Mori: animitas of Chilean theater design» is a mise en scène where, like executioners, we have selected and killed twenty of our masters and exhibited their animitas, erecting a mortuary pavilion. So it is that costume designers, transvestites, painters, lighting designers, hairpiece designers, professors, scenographers, and puppeteers, share a place in this pavilion.

In Chile, animitas are small traditional constructions that house the spirit of a deceased person at the site of his or her tragic death. They are visited constantly by devotees, who light candles and ask the spirits for favors. If these favors are granted, they must be repaid with an offering – a commemorative plaque, a set of candles, or personal objects – to express their gratitude. The animitas, as a popular and collective manifestation, offer a rare experience.

They pop up on streets and bridges, squares, and deserts, in different shapes and colors, telling the story of an absence and invoking a presence: a ghost.

The same ghost we invoke when we kill our masters.

We are tired of maintaining a legacy that does not belong to us, so choosing to kill twenty of our mentors was the healthiest solution we have found for now.

This mortuary pavilion is kept alive by its visitors, who have the opportunity to visit the animitas of the masters and participate in the performance by dying a little, but only a little, just enough for us to capture part of their spirit and exhibit it as a testimony of their complicity in this misdeed.

We have killed the masters, and we preserve their spirits in these animitas that are paradoxically brimming with life, for it is a fact that stage designers do not rest in peace.

We have killed our mentors, and we are not sorry. This pavilion is not a tribute. 

We don’t need more tributes.