Art and intercultural: the case of sculpture park "vía christi" Junín de los Andes – Neuquén

Abstract

This work aims to problematize the relationship between art and multiculturalism from the analysis of so-called Via Christi Sculpture Park. In this case, we want to make a first approach to the term multiculturalism to discover the different meanings that arise from our interviewees’ statements.

The Via Christi is a tourist-religious walk which is located in the Cerro de la Cruz town of Junín de Los Andes in the province of Neuquén. It consists of twenty-two stations with sculptures, which tell the "life" or way of Christ, and not the usual ordeal of suffering and death. They extend over a distance of two kilometers.

The project started around 1998 by the Sisters of Mary Help of Christians (female branch of the Salesian Congregation with a long history in the region) who formed a working group composed of clerics, city officials, residents, local artists and architect Alejandro Santana, director of the work.
From personal interviews to the Sisters, the park is considered a true example of "intercultural, interreligious and Latin American identity." We do not focus on a formal plastic analysis of the work of art. Instead, from the fieldwork and based on the existing literature, we propose as
main objective to know the plurality of meanings of the actors involved
-representatives of the municipality, of the church, of the the Mapuche community of Junín de Los Andes and artists- in the conception and execution of the work which may or may not validate the Via Christi as an artistic expression of intercultural character.
The in situ and personal interviews are of vital importance, since it is not merely a theoretical concept, but an underway reality that cannot be stopped from happening, but that acquires different uses and has different meanings in different contexts and places of enunciation, with profound implications.