Celia Leyton was a Chilean painter, muralist, educator, writer, and cultural manager, and an indispensable figure in the history of women artists who developed their production in non-central territories in the 1930s. Her approach to the Mapuche people–nation and her awareness of social criticism earned her the recognition of the community with which she shared twenty-five years of her life, and she was renamed Millaküyén (“Golden Moon”). This is how Celia Leyton chooses to portray herself in this work, where she brings together the complex network of signs of the Mapuche culture and self- displaces her own identity. Thus, she bears the trarilonko (silver headband), chaway (earrings), a trapelakucha (silver pectoral), and a trariwe (woven sash). The work appears on the cover of her book Raza Araucana from 1950, a publication that is part of a series of self-published books by the artist. Celia Leyton has been displaced by art historiography and is rarely represented in museums.
This is the first time the work of Celia Leyton is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Gloria Cortés Aliaga
