Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC): Exhibition reuses pandemic masks to create art on paper

That the streets were empty, that the bats were to blame, that you had to protect yourself, that it is better not to touch your eyes, that it is better to always walk with masks. The pandemic was creating new symbols, fears, customs and images, which today are part of Miniprint Corona UC, an interdisciplinary project between the School of Art , the School of Medicine , and the UC CHRISTUS Health Network.

Led by Professor Carolina Larrea and with funding from the UC Department of Arts and Culture , this initiative focused on giving another life to one of the most visible residues of the pandemic: with the daily use and change of masks due to the crisis. health, from the UC hospital and clinic they wanted to contribute to its recycling. Thus, Larrea and his team proposed reusing the cotton from the masks to create paper, which would later be the support of an exhibition of pictorial works, inaugurated this October 19 next to the hall of the UC hospital on Marcoleta street.


“Everything behind this and the content that this has is incredible: it is worrying about the environment and recycling, because hospitals produce a lot of waste. But, in addition, it acquires a tremendous meaning in its message when part of this recycling is carried to art, and this is done in a period as special as this pandemic crisis, where this art is now reflecting what people have experienced. I want to congratulate the initiative of Professor Carolina Larrea, students of the School of Art and Medicine, and the health network and the hospital for participating in this idea, because these are the types of issues that allow us to grow as a society” , says Felipe Heusser, dean of the Faculty of Medicine .

This exhibition is also part of the 85th anniversary of the UC hospital, and the 33rd anniversary of the UC CHRISTUS Health Network clinic.

“We had the possibility of transforming something that we already ended up hating -like masks-, on paper, on a support for art. All these paintings are made on paper created from masks, and from the paper that the doctors put on the stretchers when they treat us, and that sometimes are used for only five minutes, and then they are lost. We have transformed this into works where different experiences of the participating artists in these last two years are appreciated. From tributes for deaths, from putting an image to the coronavirus, from those days when the streets were empty. I hope that the people who circulate through the hospital can take some time to observe these works, connect with their sensations and process this moment”, says Carolina Larrea, an academic at the UC School of Art and head of the Master of Arts.





To carry out the exhibition there was a long teamwork, made up of Dr. Valentina Serrano, and assistants Tania Medina and Josefa Munizaga, among other Art and Medicine students. They were the ones who collected the masks, and then cut them for two months into tiny segments, which would allow the extraction of the cotton necessary to generate paper. In total, some 1,500 masks were collected inside the Faculty of Arts, the UC Theater, the hospital, in addition to large bags with the stretcher covers from a special container.

“To play a role, it takes a lot of practice. This technique uses little water and, with the water shortage that exists, it seemed important to us to opt for that. The idea was to achieve a smooth paper suitable for printing in a short time, and this happens because it has a high percentage of cotton obtained from clothing, as was done in the 15th century” , says Carolina Larrea.

This sample will be available at the Marcoleta medical center between October 19 and November 15, and then move to San Carlos de Apoquindo from November 18 to December 15.

“This marks a change in how we have to see things. These masks have accompanied us with their advantages and disadvantages, it has hidden our faces from all of us for so long, and now we see how it transforms into something less dark. No matter how much knowledge we may have from medicine, there are things that we cannot give, but that can be treated through art” , says Dr. José Ignacio Rodríguez, Medical Director of the UC Clinical Hospital.

Precisely, the importance of research behind this project has already had international recognition: Carolina Larrea and part of the team that worked on this exhibition were invited to speak at the A2RU conference at the University of Michigan, dedicated to research in the arts, Science and humanities.

“They were interested in the fact that this was a collaborative, interdisciplinary investigation with a vision of self-sustainability, and we will be there with some of the students who participated in the initiative. We are going to expose the whole process, what motivated us, and how transcendental art is to transform an element like the mask -something that prevented us from seeing smiles- into an aesthetic experience, which today contacts us with our emotions and helps us to process this period of time” , says Carolina Larrea.