Mario Fonseca is a visual artist, art critic, curator, academic, writer, designer and Chilean publisher. Born in Lima, Peru in 1948, he has lived in Chile since 1966.
Fonseca enrolled in the School of Fine Art of the Universidad Católica in 1966 but dropped out of the program to embark on his professional career in graphic design and publishing. Simultaneously, he began to take personal photographs that would express his feelings about the political turmoil around Salvador Allende’s presidency, which ended with the brutal military coup of 1973. Fonseca’s 1972 series Calle Suecia and Santo Domingo, which he made in his early 20’s, stem from that haunting period. Later in his practice, he began to experiment with conceptual art, which he would continue to develop for many years, becoming one of the forefront conceptual artists in Chile during the 80s. Later, in 2009, Fonseca was awarded his Bachelor of Visual Arts with a degree in Photography.
In the 80s and 90s, Fonseca had a determining role in the publication of books and catalogues of works by highly influential Chilean theorists, poets and artists such as, Ronald Kay, Eugenio Dittborn, Raúl Zurita, Lotty Rosenfeld, Justo Mellado, Gonzalo Díaz, Arturo Duclos, Juan Dávila, Alfredo Jaar, Paz Errázuriz, Roser Bru and Eugenio Téllez, amongst others. At the time, these publications were considered important and influential platforms for the diffusion of the different manifestations of art in Chile.
A ceaselessly inventive artist, Fonseca experimented with the medium of photography, writing, collage and graphics. His approach to art during those years was quite unique in Chile as there was little experimentation in art practices and certainly little crossover between the different plastic mediums. Looking at Fonseca’s works, one can only elaborate on the significance of his coded conceptual images, which spoke of the political climate stifled by a highly censured environment. One of Fonseca’s most recognized series is Habeas Corpus, which was produced in 1979-1982 and exhibited in Galería Sur in 1982. The series of self-portraits is based on Identity: the hiding of one’s identity in a political context. In the works, the artist covers his face with masking tape or a piece of plastic thus hinting at a veiled presence or a latent absence. In La Guerra Contemporánea (Contemporary War), a series dated 1982-1983, Fonseca cut the technical blue prints of iconic North American war airplanes, the F15 and F16 used in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and ironically superimposed them on the enlarged portraits of Ronald Reagan and Menachem Begin, speaking of power and its abuse. In the late 80’s, Fonseca turned his lens to a softer and more intimate register. Entre Ríos (1987) is a soul-searching reflection of the artist’s domestic day to day and although the pictures seem rather candid they still are constructed along conceptual lines.
In 1996 a large exhibition “Fotografía c1986-1995” was held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile. In 2017, the Museo de Artes Visuales in Santiago held another retrospective of Fonseca’s work spanning the last 20 years and entitled “Reflejo Invol-untario” (Involuntary Reflex).
Fonseca’s work is part of important collections with a focus on Latin American Art in the USA and Europe, including the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York and the Leticia & Stanislas Poniatowski Collection. It is in the permanent collections of the most important Chilean museums: the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Visual Arts, and the Salvador Allende Museum of Solidarity. Today Fonseca continues to work prolifically as an artist, a writer and a designer
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