Chods, color de oro

Chods, color de oro of 1997 comes from the Objectos mágicos series which, as Pereda explains in her Artist Statement, focus on objects from Mapuche culture. Pereda spent an important part of her childhood in Mapuche territory, in the Nueqén region of Patagonia in Southern Argentina. In her work she seeks to explore the links between people and places, and so to revivify memory. In this piece she uses a rough canvas support (arpillera) and fine brush strokes to recreate the texture as well as the woven pattern of a traditional Mapuche poncho. The red and white cross design is of a type associated with the local chiefs or lonkos. The painted textile provides, in turn, a canvas, a background on which are inscribed signs suggestive of Mapuche symbols. In this way this piece explores aspects of the spiritual as well as the material culture of the Mapuche.

This work suggests that memory can be elusive. Is the textile design fading into the background or emerging from it? Is the central patterned band bleeding down into or emerging from the dark triangle? Memory may fade but it can also be reborn and the overall sense of this work is of celebration and hope. The word chods in Mapuche means yellow, the colour of the sun and of gold and the painting is bathed in a gloriously warm golden glow: Chods, Colour of Gold.