Architect Nicolás Sáez lives and works in Concepción, Chile, where he was born in 1973. A teacher at Bío-Bío University, he is also art director of the magazine Arquitecturas del Sur. He has exhibited in Chile and at the 2010 Beijing Biennial and is an active member of the the Concepción Fotográfica collective. His series MARca was part of the group show Fuera de Lugar at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago in 2011.
Over the last few years Nicolás Sáez has been pursuing a photographic examination of “the people’s visual memory” and, especially, the way residents relate to the city they live in. The earthquake that hit Chile on 27 February 2010 extended to a large part of the country. The epicentre was in the lagoon of Concepción: the resultant tsunami ravaged the coastline and the Juan Fernández archipelago and the shock was felt as far away as Santiago. Directly affected by the disaster, Nicolás Sáez found himself confronted with the damage inflicted by the tsunami, and took photographs in the streets of Concepción.
His MARca series shows the interiors of houses and shops. Seen from a distance, the images form an arresting ensemble, with their frontal approach and the warm colours of the walls; and as we move closer we see the high water mark left by the receding tide This stain left by the sea is the source of the work’s title: MARca combines the Spanish words mar (sea) and marca (mark). Exploring the houses just after the tsunami in what he calls an “emergency assignment”, Sáez sets out both to convey the perceptions of someone faced with an abruptly deserted space, and to capture the visible traces left by the sea. Suspended in time, these mute images leave the viewer with a physical sensation of a void, of a tide that has ebbed, of holding one’s breath in the wake of disaster.
Christine Barthe, curator
Text from the catalogue-book “Photoquai”, co-edited by Musée du Quai Branly- Actes-Sud
