JUAN CASTILLO: THE FACE AS LANDSCAPE AND TERRITORY

Tu rostro es el paisaje is the tribute that MEMORIA dedicates, at its Carabanchel space, to Juan Castillo (Antofagasta, Chile, 1952 – Stockholm, Sweden, 2025), a member of C.A.D.A. (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte). His practice was marked by an exploration of the relationship between people and the territories they inhabit, as well as by a sustained inquiry into representation and the images that endure.

The exhibition brings together some of his final works, which bring together several of the principal lines of his artistic research. Moving between installation, photography, video, drawing and writing, Castillo develops a search for a distinctive language through which to articulate questions of displacement and memory. His personal experience, and his move to Sweden from his native Chile, constitute fundamental points of departure for understanding his conception of territory as a space in which identity and social experience are inscribed.

The title of the exhibition establishes a relationship between person and territory, or body and space, positioning the face as a surface through which a particular relationship with landscape also emerges. Castillo brings these two concepts together in compositions that give prominence to organs, faces and landscapes, blurring the boundaries between them. In Tu rostro es el paisaje (2018), a skeleton lies among barely recognizable silhouettes, occupying the space where face and landscape converge and thereby questioning the representation of bodies, territories and identities.

The exhibition also examines the instrumental nature of the map in contrast to the landscape. While the map renders and constrains a bounded space, landscape exceeds such limits through symbols that become forms of belonging. In this sense, Castillo’s blurred faces compel the viewer to scrutinize the very conditions of recognition.

Juan Castillo: Tu rostro es el paisaje is on view until 7 November 2026 at MEMORIA (Carabanchel), Morenés Arteaga, 18, Madrid, Spain.