Selknam, 2016

Stoneware, porcelain and the raku technique

5m/5m (variable dimensions)

Property of the artist

The stones, still, moist, modelled by the energy and movement of nature, heat, cold, water and the austral wind, witness the passage of time, thousands and thousands of years observing, listening and recording on its surface traces of history, in silence.

The stone is nature. The stone is part of the landscape of Patagonia, with its long beaches, forests and plains, moving clouds and furious wind in a still and pure light. The stones are a witness to human history. They have seen and felt everything. They saw the first inhabitants, the southern native peoples, their life and death, a culture rich in myths and respect for nature, exterminated by civilization.

Javier Canales. Strait of Magellan, Chile, NOVEMBER 2016

… “A few decades ago, the white man began to invade our island, there is much I could tell you about the excuses they use to extinguish our people. It began by occupying the lands that Taiyin, on behalf of Temauquel, had distributed among the thirty-nine strains. The pastures were populated with sheep and guarnacos. The Selk’nam first believed they could dispose of these sheep, as they had hunted guanacos before, satisfying their hunger with them, but the white man, who had taken our land from us, declared that this represented a robbery and sent armed bands to kill our people, paying one or two coins of gold for every Selk’ nam murdered. They often placed poisoned sheep in the fields, whose consumption contributed to the decimation of our people. A war with blood and fire began, as a result of which our people were expelled from their fields, having to retreat more and more to the south, where some still live. I would like to express that these bandits were not Chileans or Argentines, but strangers who came to our big island from the other side of the great ocean. When the Chilean and Argentine governments realised what had happened, they put a stop to these crimes, but our people had already been reduced to a fraction of the number of inhabitants they had been before. But I do not want recriminations, nor give myself to lamentations, which do not harmonize with our character. I have evoked this recent history of Tierra del Fuego just to be able to say a few words of farewell. Surely, the day will come when the last of us will die and no one will use our language anymore. “

Carlos Keller.

Fragment farewell to the book “God in the land of fire”

JAVIER CANALES (1968) of Magallanes origin, realized his studies of Bachelor in Fine Arts in the University of Arts and Social Sciences, ARCIS Santiago.

Assistant sculptor of Harold Krussell, Santiago. He worked in the workshop Concha in the Museum of Natural History, Santiago and in the workshop Gres/ Raku Ceramics of Maximiliano Abiatti, Buenos Aires.

His work has always been shifted between the culture of the almost extinct southern native peoples and nature, it has been a constant and direct reference in his artwork. Textures, colours, gesture and graphic of painted bodies appear not only in his work but also in the concept, generating the deeper relationship of appreciation and awareness with the natural environment of Patagonia, developing links between contemporary art, education, nature and landscape of a unique geographic space.