In Chile, the mighty Andes mountain range serves as a landmark helping you find your way around. The mountain range is visible from almost every corner of the long, narrow country. Urban environments exist against a backdrop of nature, a high wall that still sets the direction and reminds us where we are. At the centre of the exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall is Mamita Montaña (Mother Mountain), a mountain and a primordial force that links the Andes with the Swedish mountains.
The mountain is an image that has accompanied Montti Colque for a long time. It is an outline on the horizon and a place of longing. Something that is heavy, firmly rooted and refuses to move. The mountain is a spiritual interlocutor, a place to celebrate, a place to mourn and a place to build a home. It also represents the ancestral origins of Montti Colque, whose grandfather belonged to the Andean Aymara people. Throughout the years, the immovable mountain has accompanied her as a subject in drawings, paintings, sculptures and performances – as the backdrop against which everything in life takes place.
In the drawing La Jardinera – The Female Gardener (2011) we see Montti Colque’s recurring character Jokerita – a trixterous suburban mum with traits of Batman’s well-known enemy. With a painted-on grin, Jokerita was initially angry, strong as a bear and ready to fight for her children at any moment. But like all of Montti Colque’s characters, Jokerita is constantly transforming and changing. Over the years, she has become softer. Now she is more likely to seek reconciliation. In the drawing, the mountain is no longer something that is only visible on the horizon. Instead, Jokerita herself is carrying her mountains on her back. She is on her way to a funeral with wilting flowers in her hand. In the sky above, images of her ancestors float like sarcophagus-shaped clouds. The drawing speaks of a mourning for matriarchal ties lost in the wake of migration and came about after Montti Colque was unable to attend her grandmother’s funeral. (1)
When Montti Colque was invited to the 60th Venice Art Biennale, as the first representative of the Chilean diaspora to represent the country of Chile, she decided it was time to build her own mountain. During a couple of cold winter months in Stockholm, the artist erected her largest work to date, Mamita Montaña, before making the arduous journey to Venice. The nearly six-metre-high monumental work, which has now been erected at Bonniers Konsthall, is a monument to Montti Colque’s practice and work as an artist. Like almost all her works, it was created in close and trusting collaboration with a large group of friends.
The Mamita Montaña consists of rugs, paintings, printed fabrics, painted cutlery and glitter garlands intertwined into a teeming landscape. Constructed and found objects where every single detail carries its own story. A picnic with friends on the mountainside blends into a loving portrait of a mother with her child. Two children in an aeroplane hover over a wedding and a traditional costume from Hälsingland, above which a garland of eggshells obscures a face. The beings that populate the mountain are everyday and supernatural – here and mythological at the same time. The mountain landscape has peaks and valleys. The sun rises over one side of the mountain, and sets over the other. The mountain itself holds a framed image. Like an Escher reflection, the image in the mountain’s hand contains at least as many more stories. At the very top, the mountain is crowned by a large ceramic face. The portrait resembles the artist herself, and suddenly the mountain takes on the form of a figure who, with a proud, gentle seriousness, harbours all these stories within herself.
For the Chilean Pavilion, Montti Colque had another dream, which there was neither time nor opportunity to realise. In the dream, the bearers of the stories that built Mamita Montaña, the characters – and the friends who helped her – would travel to the mountain themselves. Through a hike to the top, they would anchor themselves in the landscape, connecting the spirit world and reality, history and the present. The video work was recorded a few weeks before the opening of this exhibition, and in a way forms a kind of finale.
Strong artistic practices are often characterised by a sense of urgency. In these cases, art becomes an urgent matter for the viewer as well. In the case of Valeria Montti Colque, the imperative in her art is the persistent search for a sense of belonging. Determined that nothing is defined, she uses everyday materials, endless labour and love to piece together new worlds. She builds her own universe where everyone has a place, and where everyone is invited. In her practice, Montti Colque claims to cultivate the garden of the rootless. Like a gardener, she cultivates a strong, real physical and emotional community in her art.
1. Macarena Dusant, La Jardinera: Valeria Montti Colque (Dokument Press, 2017)
Image: Valeria Montti Colque, Cosmonación – Modersberget, 2025. Photo: Bonniers Konsthall (Valdemar Asp)
