Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien
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Made To Move

A mobile roots-like structure held at the top by a suitcase handle, Made to Move is a felt sculpture made with sheep wool dyed with native plants from Willimapu (Archipelago Chiloé, Chile).

Made To Move (2021), sheep wool dyed with plants and trees from the archipelago of Chiloé in Chile (carried to San Francisco circa 2009), alpaca wool, wire, suitcase handle, and ritual, 48” x 60” x 32” (122 x 152 x 81 cm)

 
“What is at stake politically when Indigenous ways are conceived erroneously as unstructured and deterritorialising, when (Western) subjectivities are constructed as ‘nomad’ but nomadism is no longer marked as a mode of existence special to Indigenous humanity, and when (Western) subjective transformation is construed as a process of ‘becoming-autochthonous that erases the specificity of ‘the Autochthon’ and results in her self-alienation?”
— Simone Bignall & Daryle Rigney, Indigeneity, Posthumanism and Nomad Thought

Self-portrait in my studio at San Francisco State University, 2022

Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 2022

Forestry expansion policies in Chile have led to the creation of large pine and eucalyptus plantations in the south of the country with a significant portion located in the Mapuche territory. Elevated from the soil and beheaded like the native forest, Made to Move responds to the popular misconstrued Deleuzian idea of the ‘nomad’ as an indigenous practice of peoples who naturally tend to be unstructured and deterritorialized.