A House Containing

My artist book A House Containing is a layered and intimate weaving of family history, museological fieldwork, and theories of materiality and agency of objects. 

In 2022, I ‘returned’ to Chile as a descendant of the mass exodus of Chileans during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), from which my young mother fled. My visit to the country was to work in the Collections Department of the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, a state-run museum focused on memories of the dictatorship; and to repair my familial home in población (shantytown) Caleta Abarca, Viña del Mar. I quickly realized that these two labors mirrored each other; in both the museum and the house I contended with the affective weight of history each time I touched the decayed objects around me.

Part ethnography, part memoir, my book follows my return to Chile through the archives of Luchita Hurtado and Lee Mullican, two notable midcentury artists and collectors working in Southern California. My work uses the archives to show how dust, salt, and inherited possessions hold the afterlives of political exile, artistic practice, and personal memory.

A House Containing was a publication part of an eponymous exhibition at Wolfpack HQ through the Estates of Luchita Hurtado and Lee Mullican, presented July-August 2025. The book is also available for limited in-person sales at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles.