Providencia

“We turned off the highway and crossed the Mapocho River, and I finally saw the city, now completely covered in graffiti, like an open book, polyphonic, aggressive, miraculously legible. Like a book where everyone had underlined a different passage.”
Excerpt from “Accent” by Alejandro Zambra

Providencia—providence—in its biblical meaning, describes God’s intervention in the universe, an influence beyond human control. The Providencia neighbourhood of Santiago de Chile provides both setting and title for this new series by Daniel Reuter. Architectural details, glass reflections, makeshift structures, barricades that obstruct the view. Figures appear, the reiteration of a narrator, or characters living within a fractured narrative? Reuter’s Providencia describes a place locked between a complicated past and an uncertain future. Beneath a surface layer of the quotidian, we sense the last big wave of western aspirations crashing down, conjuring the dreams and disenchantment of a world in upheaval.