Since 1994, Voluspa Jarpa has sustained an extensive artistic production, participating in group and solo exhibitions both in Chile and abroad. Her work has explored extensive research and artworks that inquire into the nature of the archive, memory and the cultural and symbolic notion of social trauma. This research has focused on the Cold War in the Latin American region through the commissioning and review of the process of declassification of intelligence files that the US has carried out on the countries of the region in recent decades. The implication of secrecy as a modus operandi of politics, its effects on the psyche, as well as the exploration of ways to emancipate ourselves from these structures, are the main concerns of her recent works and research.
She has had important solo exhibitions, including En nuestra pequeña región de por acá at MALBA, Buenos Aires (2016); or L’effet Charcot at La Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris (2010). She has participated in many international exhibitions, including Altered Views, in the Chilean Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennial, Italy (2019); Proregress, 12th Shanghai Biennial, China (2018); Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017-2018); and the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2014), among others. In 2012 she received the Illy Award at ARCOmadrid for the work Minimal Secret; in 2021 received the Julius Baer Award to Latin American Female Artists for the work Sindemia and in 2023 was awarded with the Acquisition Prize of the XVI Biennial of Cuenca for the work Cartografías de la Sindemia.
