From the time of the social uprising in Chile (2019) until September 2026, the podium of the General Baquedano Monument stood guarded and empty in Plaza Baquedano – renamed by the people as Plaza Dignidad – and for seven years there was no representation of power (or future) other than the public square itself, marked by revolt and resistance. This past September, the square was reopened, restoring the general’s statue to its pedestal and flanking it, this time, with a new monument to Gabriela Mistral, alongside a complete renovation of the space. Gabriela Mistral, “the queer mother of the nation” (as Licia Fiol-Matta calls her in her book), has always been misrepresented as the celibate face of the state, as the teacher who comes to calm the children’s spirits. Always ignoring the uncomfortable and highly complex figure she truly was.

In the third iteration of Friendship Screenings, Kuntsverein invites Camil Téllez to share with us a compilation of short video works that engages with Gabriela Mistral’s personal life, her epistolary and poetic work, her lesbianism, her visible gender nonconformity, and her constant migration across the Americas and Europe in search of her “home” — an intimate space between absence, her childhood memory, and her poetic imagination. Through performance and moving-image, Camil Téllez forges their own relational and bodily connection with the historical past of their homeland, Chile.

This event is a collaboration between kuntsverein and QMA.