MOCA Artist Film Series: Seba Calfuqueo
TRAY TRAY KO, 2022, 6 min.
NGÜRÜ KA WILLIÑ (Fox and Otter), 2022, 4 min.
You will never be a Weye, 2015, 4min 46sec

The MOCA Artist Film Series, presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation, is an active and dynamic platform for the presentation of artist films. Inspired by film and video works in MOCA’s renowned collection, these programs explore the critical issues of our time and place and focus on experiments in long-form, narrative, and feature-length films. With ongoing presentations in the Ahmanson Auditorium, all screenings feature artists in dialogue with fellow artists, historians, and critics.

Seba Calfuqueo, a Mapuche artist born in 1991 in Santiago de Chile, Ngulumapu/Chile, uses her heritage to critically examine the social, cultural, and political position of Indigenous individuals in modern Chile and Latin America. Presented in Mapudungun with English subtitles, Calfuqueo's videos reinterpret classical Mapuche tales and legends to explore the relationship between the human body and the environment, foregrounding sexuality, land rights, and restitution.

This program includes three videos:
TRAY TRAY KO, 2022, 6 min. Wearing an electric blue garment, Calfuqueo performs a simple and powerful ritual to reach and enter a waterfall, a vital and sacred space in her culture.

NGÜRÜ KA WILLIÑ (Fox and Otter), 2022, 4 min. Made in collaboration with Roberto Riveros A.K.A Neo Cristo, this animation offers Calfuqueo’s version of a traditional fable which depicts a sexual encounter between an otter and outspoken trans vixen.

You will never be a Weye (2015), 4 min 46 sec. An early, biographical video performance unveiling the erasure of the history of the Machis Weyes (those who defy gender binaries) due to Catholic indoctrination enforced by colonizers and the politics of the Chilean state.

Calfuqueo will be present for a post-screening conversation with artist Carolina Caycedo.

Seba Calfuqueo (b. 1991, Santiago de Chile, Ngulumapu/Chile) lives and works in Santiago de Chile. Her recent solo exhibitions include “PACIFICACIÓN” at Palacio Pereira, Santiago de Chile (2023), “Fluir como cascadas” at Nave, Santiago (2022), and “Espejo de Agua / Esporas” at Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago de Chile (2021). Calfuqueo’s works have been featured in exhibitions and screenings including the 22nd Bienal SESC Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2022), and the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2021). She has been a resident at FAARA Fundación Ama Amoedo Residencia Artística (2023) and has received awards from Eyebeam (2023), Fundación FAVA (2018), and Municipalidad de Santiago (2017). In addition to her own practice, Calfuqueo is part of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü, which publishes YeneRevista, an online magazine of art, thought, and writing in Wallmapu and AbyaYala languages.

Carolina Caycedo is a Colombian multidisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. Through her studio practice and fieldwork with communities impacted by large-scale infrastructure and other extraction projects, she invites viewers to consider the unsustainable pace of growth under capitalism and how we might embrace resistance and solidarity. Caycedo is a 2023 United States Artists fellow, a 2023 Soros Art fellow, and the 2023–24 Getty Research Institute Artist in Residence.

MOCA Artist Film Series is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator with Alitzah Oros, Public Programming Associate, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

MOCA Artist Film Series is presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation.