“La creación del mundo según el mito Mapuche”

Mario Toral

A Chilean artist who works internationally. His work explores a plethora of artistic techniques and languages, from engraving to short films, easel painting and mural painting. In addition to his constant interest in contemporary plastic techniques and theories, Toral’s work focuses on the representation of both national identity based on collective memory, as well as individuality and the existential problems of contemporary humans.

Recovering historical memory

The work La creación del mundo según el mito Mapuche (“The creation of the world according to the Mapuche mythology”) in our permanent collection is a preparatory oil painting that the artist Mario Toral created for his great mural work Memoria Visual de una Nación (“A Visual Memory of a Nation”).

Both in La creación del mundo según el mito Mapuche and throughout his mural work, Toral seeks to recover a collective memory where all peoples feel identified. To do this, he represents historical facts, geography, local mythology and characters, such as indigenous heroes, presidents and poets. It is a journey from the origins, through the pre-Hispanic past, the conquest, the creation of a Republic State until the present day and modernity.

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  La creación del mundo según el mito Mapuche, 1993

  The creation of the world according to the Mapuche mythology
  Mario Toral Muñoz
  Oil and acrylic on canvas
  230 x 150 cm
  Preparatory work for the Mural Project Memoria Visual de una Nación [“A Visual Memory of a Nation”], inaugurated in 1996.
   

  Ralli Collection © Mario Toral Muñoz, VEGAP, Málaga 2024

The project “Memoria Visual de una Nación”

The mural project Memoria Visual de una Nación is part of the MetroArte initiative, which aims to bring art closer to citizens by placing murals in places of transit such as metro stations. Other artists who have participated in the creation of murals within this project include Roberto Matta, Rodolfo Opazo, Osvaldo Peña, Hernán Miranda and Elisa Aguirre, with a total of 54 murals painted by individual and collective artists.

This mural by Mario Toral is located in the University of Chile metro station, right in the city centre. It covers 1,200 m2 and has six panels in total, where the artist distinguishes between Past and Present. Each of these parts includes three panels with different scenes alluding to the history and the collective imagination of the moment.

La creación del mundo según el mito Mapuche has been placed within the Antiguos pobladores (“Ancient Settlers”) panel. Alongside it, El encuentro (“The Meeting”) and La conquista (“The Conquest”) complete the first part of the mural entitled El Pasado (“The Past”). Each panel is in turn divided into more scenes, within which the scene represented in La creación del mundo según el mito Mapuche is of particular note

According to the Mapuche mythology and Toral’s words:

“The world was created and destroyed by two snakes: MaiMai and TenTen. The head of God Pillan, God of Volcanoes and of Fire, observes. He is a benevolent God that protects humanity (…) A stone figure represents the Mapuche warrior, war being the noblest activity of the race. He has a representation of a bludgeon, a bone or stone object, symbol of the investiture of the Toqui or the chief. There are scenes of daily life, bodies in a river, cacti, shells”. 

Mario Toral, 2002.
Memoria Visual de una Nación [A Visual Memory of a Nation]