Exhibition “Lotty Rosenfeld. By Pass. The Boundary of the Sign”

The 2025 edition of PHotoESPAÑA hosts an essential exhibition: “Lotty Rosenfeld. By Pass. The Boundary of the Sign”, an in-depth review of the legacy of one of the most powerful voices in Latin American video art.

Rosenfeld, born in Santiago de Chile in 1943 and deceased in 2020, made her work an active form of resistance. At the height of the dictatorship, when the use of public space was restricted and images were censored, her direct, incisive and often bodily interventions disrupted the urban landscape to expose the invisible structures of power. Her most iconic action, transforming traffic lines into white crosses, remains a symbol of graphic insubordination today.

The exhibition traces key moments in her career, from her early street gestures to her pieces in spaces charged with symbolism, such as the Santiago Stock Exchange or border areas. With archival materials, video records and audiovisual work, the exhibition reveals how Rosenfeld dismantled everyday signs to open cracks in neoliberal logic, social exclusion and imposed norms around the body and gender. “By Pass” not only gives the exhibition its name, but also names the strategy of her work: intervening where everything appears to be sealed, in order to set in motion again what was blocked. A proposal as urgent as it is current.