Night Unravels – Screening and talk video art Chilean artists

Night unravels

Screening and talk of short films of Chilean artists

curated by Soledad García Saavedra

Night unravels is a selection of short films by artists León & Cociña, Javier Rodríguez and Valentina Morales. The works deal with material cinema, tackling reality matters, personal or collective mythologies, and proceed during the night or through fiction. Using exorcism, spiritism and sound shades, this group of works unravel the uncertainty, the unspeakable or emotions that accumulate in rage and violence, and which protagonism is the experience of women personification and their confessions.The talk and screening led by curator Soledad García Saavedra brings a dialogue about each work and the questions on fragile identities, acceptance and power in the context of Chilean art, social and political history.

Screening program in order of appearance:

Valentina Morales, Nube y estrella (Nimbus & Star), 2018

Javier Rodríguez, La pista oculta (The hidden clue, work in progress), 2023

León & Cociña, Los huesos (The bones), 2021

Both the works in Night Unravels and the exhibition She Keeps Them Warm With Her Skirt explore femininity as a fluid and transformative experience. Using fiction, ritual, performance, and symbolism, the artists deconstruct dominant images of the feminine and reveal the tensions between personal identity, historical narratives, and societal norms. The works delve into mythical and dreamlike realms to express suppressed emotions. They challenge colonial and patriarchal frameworks by reimagining the female body and voice as sites of ambiguity, resistance, and potential. Ultimately, these projects create space for alternative modes of being and imagining, where womanhood is not fixed but constantly redefined through storytelling, fantasy, and embodied experience.

About the artist

León & Cociña

León & Cociña artist duo composed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña that have been working together since 2007. They were educated at the Universidad Católica, Santiago de Chile. León also studied at UDK (Berlin) and De Ateliers (Amsterdam). With their experimental films, León and Cociña create a new interpretation of the religious symbolism and magical rituals that are deeply rooted in the traditional culture of Latin America. For the production of their films they combine different techniques such as photography, drawing, sculpture, dance and performance. León and Cociña won several awards and their films are selected regularly for international film festivals. Their work is frequently exhibited in museums and biennials in Latin America, but it has also been presented at venues such as the Whitechapel Gallery, the Guggenheim, KW Berlin, the Venice Biennial 2013 and Art Basel Statements 2012 with Upstream Gallery. Their short film Los huesos (The Bones) (2021) won Best Short film at the Venice Film Festival 2021, where it had its world premiere.

Javier Rodríguez

Javier Rodríguez Pino was born in Santiago, Chile in 1981. He holds a PhD in Art from the Universitat Politècnica de València ans is currently a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación (UMCE). His projects, which combine drawing, film, historical narrative and horror fiction, have been presented at La Gran Galería (Madrid, Spain 2024), Galería Gabriela Mistral (Santiago de Chile, 2024), the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (León, Spain 2022), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago (Santiago de Chile, 2022), Laznia Center for Contemporary Art (Gdansk, Poland 2020), MeetFactory (Prague, Czech Republic 2019), Izolyatsia (kyiv, Ukraine 2018), Galería Metales Pesados ​​Visual, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, (Santiago de Chile 2017 and 2016), Centro Matadero (Madrid, Spain 2015), Flora Ars+Natura (Bogotá, Colombia) 2014), among others. Under this same intersection, he published with publisher Metales Pesados the graphic novels Cobra (2025), Ruinas (2022), and Anticristo (2017). His work has been widely recognized and can be found in numerous collections in different countries. He is currently working on his first animated short film with the film and audiovisual production company Pista B.

Valentina Morales

Valentina Lola Morales is a visual artist born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in a family of painters, philosophers, and musicians. At the age of 16, she entered to a special program at the University of Chile for the training of young artists (Basic Plastic Arts Cycle and ISUCH). Years later, she earned a degree in Sculptor from the same institution. Alongside her university studies, she complemented her creative work in non-academic workshops in disciplines such as embroidery, musical performance, dance, and film. Her work generally combines all of these areas, such as installation poems, mixing textiles, ceramics, and experimental films.

Currently, she combines the production of her personal work, alongside the development of various collaborative projects, such as Javiera Barrios’ Convergente Vocal choir and the experimental book project Lápida Publicaciones. Her most recent exhibition was El dios de las discretas cosas (The God of Discreet Things, La Cochera, Santiago, Chile, 2025). She has also participated in the Epecuén XV residencies (Carhué, Argentina, 2024) and the Estudio Abierto Residency (Oaxaca, Mexico, 2024). In previous years, she has also won awards in various young art competitions held by various institutions in Chile.

Soledad García Saavedra

Independent curator and Art Historian based in Santiago, Chile. Master in Curating at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She was Coordinator of Public Programs at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, MSSA (2017-2020) and director at the Visual Arts Documentation Center of the Centro Cultural la Moneda (2010-2016). Her curatorial work crosses interdisciplinary practices with collective experiences to approach suspended or lost stories, and the capabilities to re-enact bodily into the present. She has held exhibitions in Chile and abroad, with special interest in subjective experiences and life. Among her latest curatorial projects are Luna: Refugios de nocturnidad forzada (Shelters of Forced Nighttime, Cultural Center of Spain, Santiago), La pista oculta (The Hidden Clue) by Javier Rodríguez (Gabriela Mistral Gallery). She is the editor of books Lunes es revolución. Arte y agitación colectiva en tiempos de revueltas (Monday is a Revolution. Art and collective agitation in times of revolts, MSSA, 2024) and Arte pop y cultura popular en los largos sesenta en Chile (Pop Art and Popular Culture in the Long Sixties in Chile, Écfrasis, 2026). She is currently a member of the curatorial team The Listening Biennial, 2025.