Seba Calfuqueo. Cautín

The museum and TBA21 present Cautín, the first solo exhibition in Europe by the Mapuche trans artist Seba Calfuqueo. The artworks in the exhibition are new commissions by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. 

The title refers to the Cautín River, one of the most emblematic waterways of the Araucanía region, whose course meanders from its source in the Andes to its mouth in the Pacific Ocean. This river has been both protagonist and witness to episodes of colonization, resistance, and the struggle to defend Mapuche territory. Its history embodies the tension between colonial and extractive forces and the persistence of a cosmovision that conceives water as a source of life. 

In the exhibition, the river becomes a living being that shapes Calfuqueo’s new works while revealing the traces of its own course. Cautín invites the visitors to imagine new ways of relating to nature, grounded in reciprocity, recognition, and coexistence among waters, humans, more-than-humans, and the mythical creatures that inhabit them. 

Curator: Marina Avia Estrada.