Ignacio Acosta

Born in 1976 in Chile
Lives and works in London, UK

Ignacio Acosta is a London based, artist working with photography and exploring power dynamics in minerals, geographies and historical narratives.

In the series Copper Geographies he investigates the links between distressed ecologies of copper exploitation in the Atacama Desert, Chile and global centres of consumption and trade in Britain. Acosta understands landscape as a cultural construction; the result of problematic images, whose supposed innocence and peacefulness needs to be demystified. He interested in challenging the viewer to reflect on what is lurking behind idyllic landscapes that can expresses the impact of capitalism.

With Mapping Domeyko Acosta tries to reconstruct the adventures and endeavours of pioneering Polish mineralogist, Ignacy Domeyko (1802-1889), who moved to Chile in 1838, invited by the Chilean government, to establish a mineralogical school and ended up being a fundamental cultural resource for Latin America, as he introduced the metrical system.

Intuitive Projects is perhaps a more personal series where he responds to the alluring discovery of having an illustrious ancestor, in whose mind Acosta seems to find uncannily similar patterns and preoccupations. Painter, poet, playboy and boxer Alvaro Guevara (1894-1951), who moved to England to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and whose work – at least the pieces survived from a severe bombing in 1940 – are held in the Tate Collections.

Solo Exhibitions
2015 – Sun&Shadow – Wild Pansy Press Project Space, University of Leeds, Leeds
2010 – Mapping the Zone – Galería Moro, Santiago, Chile
2010 – Mapping the Zone: Reflections on Global Capital – London Festival of Architecture, Canary Wharf, London
2010 – On the Verge: Epiphanies on the Commuter Belt – Blank Gallery, Brighton
2007 – Blank Documents – Blank Gallery, Brighton

Group Exhibitions
2015 – Antofagasta plc. Stop Abuses!’ Depresiones Intermedias – Parque Cultural Cerro Carcel, Chile
2014 – ‘Copper Geography’ – Biennial of the End of the World, Mar del Plata, Argentina
2014 – ‘Mining Drawings’ – Cha.Co, Galería AFA, Santiago, Chile
2013 – ‘Copper Geographies’ Surface Exposure – University of Brighton

Awards & Artists commissions
2012 – Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award, University of Brighton, UK
2010 – London Festival of Architecture, Canary Wharf, London, UK
2009 – Portraits Now and Then, Haywood Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent, UK