Esta línea es mi arma: Chile

Esta línea es mi arma: Chile - Lotty Rosenfeld for the first time provides insights into the personal archive and family history of the Chilean concept artist, feminist, and political activist Lotty Rosenfeld (1943–2020). Influenced by her family’s life in exile, growing up in the shadow of loss and resistance, she developed a radical artistic practice under the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s. Using the simplest of resources—adhesive tape, lines, and crosses—she transformed streetscapes into places of protest and collective memory. Her “symbolic file of disobedience” brought into question the visual logic of power and transformed art into an instrument of political involvement. The publication combines personal memories with public statements and traces the Rosenfeld family’s journey from a bourgeois Jewish life in Breslau through exile to a new beginning in Chile—and shows why her white line was more than just a symbol: it was a weapon of resistance.

Text in English and German. 

Lotty Rosenfeld (1943–2020, Santiago de Chile, CL) was a Chilean artist and pioneer of socially engaged art practice. In her work, she questioned the public perception of symbols and social realities. In 1979, Rosenfeld, together with artist Juan Castillo, sociologist Fernando Balcells, writer Diamela Eltit, and poet Raúl Zurita, founded the interdisciplinary, political-artistic collective CADA (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte) to resist the totalitarian regime in Chile. CADA carried out actions in Chile and other places in public spaces, involving both civilians and activists and politicians. These actions were used to criticize totalitarian power structures and political injustices. The slogan “NO+” developed by the collective became a symbol of resistance against the Pinochet dictatorship and is still used today. During her lifetime, she exhibited in major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Brooklyn Museum, New York.