BIO

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Felipe García-Huidobro is a Chilean-US interdisciplinary artist whose work spans art, design, filmmaking, and architecture. By merging materials and concepts, Huidobro creates immersive spaces that challenge the viewer’s perception. His art often intertwines layers of matter with historical narratives that accumulate over time, exploring the intersections between disciplines. Through collage, video, prints, sculpture, and installation, Huidobro invites a deeper reflection on how cultural stories and environments shape our perception and experience of space.

 

Huidobro’s creative process is characterized by the superimposition, transforming them into complex forms that resonate with both the physical and historical layers of urban landscapes. This approach invites viewers to reconsider how they experience and inhabit space, offering a more nuanced understanding of their surroundings.​ A recipient of multiple awards from US and Chilean institutions, Huidobro holds a Master’s degree in Art from the Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona Spain, and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago Chile.

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STATEMENT

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Collecting, displacing, composing, organizing, editing and re-editing are key verbs in my practice. I work with materials found in the urban environment and the histories that become embedded in their layers over time. I draw from disciplines such as anthropology and archaeology, scavenging objects and materials in an effort to draw attention to their idiosyncratic narratives and their phenomenological properties. 

 

For the project Public Trace, I extracted layers of paper more than a foot thick—announcements, concert posters, etc.—from advertising pillars in Barcelona and Santiago, Chile. Recontextualized as artworks, these large sculptural collages became urban archaeological palimpsests, idiosyncratic fragments of cultural history. The process of décollage, or stripping away of layers, further highlighted the works’ sculptural dimensions and incidental poetry. 

 

Lately, I have been concerned with urban dwellings and homes in Pittsburgh, PA. My works consider how layers of personal objects and sedimented materials build up in architectural structures over time. I question both the material records left behind and how they stand in for the lives of people who passed through those buildings. 

 

My artistic practice is influenced by my training as an architect and my hands-on work as a builder and craftsman, as well as by opportunities afforded by movement: I was born in Chile, studied in Santiago and Barcelona, and emigrated to the U.S. a decade ago. Every change of environment has involved a renegotiation of cultural norms and language, as well as a renewed engagement with local urban materials. 

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