Lotty Rosenfeld

Carlota Eugenia Rosenfeld Villarreal (better known as Lotty Rosenfeld, born 1943 in Santiago, Chile) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Santiago, Chile. She was more active during the late 1970s during the time of the Chilean military coup d'etat. Rosenfeld carries out public art interventions in urban areas, often manipulating traffic signs in order to challenge viewers to rethink notions of public space and political agency. Her work has been exhibited in several countries throughout Latin America, and Internationally such as Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Art movement and involvement in art

Rosenfeld's involvement in art happened during the Chilean military coup d'etat period. Under this regime Rosenfeld utilized her artwork to demonstrate how official power and conflict zones submit bodies to the margins and borders. She wanted to be separate from the guarded spaces of art and its market therefore she used the streets to perform her work, ultimately interrogating political and cultural spaces. With her art, she hoped that she could change the mentality of people by altering history of her country. The initial medium that she worked with was video recording. She then associated herself with Neo-vanguardism and the Escena de Avanzada, a movement of artists and writers that appeared on the Chilean art scene after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. In 1979 she met a few poets and novelists, amongst them was novelist Diamela Eltit and poet Raúl Zurita and formed CADA (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte) or (Art Actions Collective). CADA is a collective activist and artist group that used interventions and performance to challenge the Pinochet regime in Chile throughout the 1970s and 1980s. She has also been involved with Fluxus, an experimental international interdisciplinary group related to visual arts, music, and literature. Rosenfeld and CADA's work dealt with transforming and intervening public urban space with the use of symbolism in order to question society's political and authority status.

During this period Rosenfeld's work involved performances and video installations.

One of her more recent works is titled Mocion de Orden (Motion of Order). This work is a large multimedia installation that was exhibited at the

Major works

Rosenfeld is best known for her 'art action' entitled Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento (A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement). Influences of the social reality that frame societies routines became the physical foundations of her creative interventions. She has brought her actions to several cities like Santiago , Washington, and New York Nuava Delhi, Kassel, La Habana,  among others.

Una Milla de Cruces Sobre el Pavimento, A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement (1979)

Una Milla de Cruces Sobre el Pavimento (A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement began in Santiago), Chile,1979, is one of Rosenfeld's most famous art action piece. She altered the lines on the pavement, ultimately creating crosses. With the help of anonymous people on the street, they transforming the painted lines that divide streets into crosses with a perpendicular axis made of white tape. Rosenfeld used straight lines on the pavement as a metaphor for the tightly held control of the Pinochet regime. By altering these often-used markings, she transgresses this subsystem of control and confronts the public with an unexpected subversion of meaning. She converts a minus sign into a plus, to create the + sign, challenging the idea that signs are fixed, static markings of meaning. The work itself was a performance piece that disrupted every day traffic under the Pinochet regime.

Mocion de Orden (2002)

Mocion de Orden,

Artwork

• Una Milla de Cruces Sobre el Pavimento, Art Action/ Video Installation, 1979
• Inversión Escénica [Scenic Investment], Art Action,1979
• Una Herida Americana, video Instalación, 1982
• White House. photography,1982
• Proposición para (entre) Cruzar Espacios Límites, Video Action,1983,
• Valparaiso- Chile, black and white photography, 1985
• Paz para Sebastián Acevedo, Video Art,1985
• Moneda
• Metro Wall St. – USA
• Cautivos, Video Instalación, 1989
• El Empeño Latinoamericano, Video Projection and Multimedia Installation, 1999
• Moción de Orden, multimedia installation, 2002
• Cuenta Regresiva, multi video proyección
• Acción de Arte, Allied Checkpoint, 2007
• Estadio Chile, Chile Triennal, 2009

Publications

• Rosenfeld, Lotty, et al. Lotty Rosenfeld: moción de orden. Ocho Libros Editores, 2002.

Solo exhibitions

1979/80 Art Action. Una Milla de Cruces Sobre El Pavimiento. Santiago, Chile

1981 Art Action: Route 68. Santiago-Valparaíso. Atacama Desert. Copiapó, Chile

1982 Art Action: White House. Washington D.D., USA. Santiago Stock Exchange, Chile

1983 Art Action: Borders Chile- Argentina. RDA-RFA. Berlin, Germany

1984 Art Action: Astronomical Observatory, El Tololo. La Serena, Chile

1985 Art Action: Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba. Civic Center of Santiago, Valparaíso Highway. Santiago, Chile

1987 Sound Intervention: Courts of Justice of Vancouver, Canada

1988 Art Action: Diego Portales. Headquarters of the Military Government. Santiago, Chile

Exhibitions

• 2002 Lotty Rosenfeld: Moción de orden, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago (traveled)
• 2007 Documenta 12, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
• 2010-11 Dislocación: Cultural Location and Identity in Times of Globalization, Kunstmuseum Bern (traveled)
• 2013 Lotty Rosenfeld: Por una poética de la rebeldía, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain
• 2015 Poéticas de la disidencia | Poetics of Dissent, Chilean Pavilion, Biennale Arte 2015, Venice, Italy

Awards and honors

• 1985 Special Jury Prize at the 1st International Video Biennial in Tokyo
• 1993 Andes Foundation Scholarship
• 1995 Chilean Critics Circle National Prize in Visual Arts
• 2001 Paoa Prize, 13th International Film Festival in Viña del Mar
• 2001 Altazor of Engraving and Drawing Prize at las Artes Nacionales
• 2015 Represented Chile in the 56th Venice Biennale along with fellow Chilean artist, Paz Errázuriz

Museum collections

• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago
• Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
• TATE Gallery, London
• MOMA, New York