Bicho raro (weird bug), is a Chilean idiom used to describe displacement from a situation a person might be in, for example the emotional impact caused by the dramatic cultural encounter and the physical change from living in Australia and returning to live in Chile; the anxiety caused by the difference in language; the uncomfortable feeling of not belonging, from these ideas the artworks emerge. The word bicho is the Spanish word for bug and raro meaning rare, less common, unusual, however when these two words are used together, they are referring to a person who is weird or is socially incompatible. Chilean’s social norm were unfamiliar: different appearance although several times people identified me as a Mapuche; Chilean colloquial jargons were absent from one’s vocabulary; people were puzzled with the sound of my accent as they could not identify its origin. Displacement in all four Bichos (Bugs) 2015 is clearly visible in the dislocation of the head from the neck. …show more content…
2) and Bicho Raro 2 (Weird Bug) 2015 (fig. 3).
A trace hidden inside the memory is triggered when viewing this fabric as it conjures feelings of happiness as a young girl while visiting my aunt. A distant image of the tablecloth in the memory is the link that connects the history of the past in Chile to the current life in Australia (pg 3) connecting the ‘private to the public’. However, in these images there are no memories of the Mapuche history from previous ancestors because in our family there is not one person who practiced or is practising the Mapuche culture and we have no direct descendants of the Mapuche apart from Jose Nieves Torres Amariles who was said to be half