Pedro Lemebel, the writer and visual artist, defeated a marginal childhood to become one of the first to shake up Chile’s conservative society during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Dressed in feather boas, stilettos and a sharp tongue, he staged revolutionary performances that defied the era’s terror, he said what no one wanted to hear in a homophobic, repressed and militarized country.

A look at the renowned writer Roberto Bolaño, and the turmoil caused by his strange relationship with Chile, his homeland. We approach the writer through his friends, his irony and his genius, traveling across Mexico, Spain and Chile.

On February 11, 2014 at 5 in the morning, in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile, Lemebel performs Desnudo Bajando la Escalera. The title of the action is a clear reference to Duchamp, but while the latter broke down perception, Lemebel breaks down linear time through a series of quotes and references. The performance alludes to emblematic cases of human rights violations during the Chilean dictatorship. The place in front of which Lembel performs is the same as Yeguas Del Apocalipsis (the art collective founded in the late 1980s by Francisco Casas and Lemebel himself) second public appearance in 1988. The country is certainly not the same, and neither is Lemebel. The artist, however, performs an embodied analogy: his body takes the place of those that have disappeared, and by returning them to the public sphere, he showcases the repression and violence of state terrorism.

Due to its isolated position between ocean and desert, the small port of Pisagua, in the north of Chile, is unfortunately known for having been transformed into a concentration camp and port of exile for political dissidents during dictatorial regimes. The 2006 video Pisagua was shot by director Veronica Quense, when the latter went with Lemebel to visit the city and collect the testimonies of the residents. The result of their experience is this action in which the artist walks barefoot, holding his heels in his hand, towards the sea. With every step he takes on the white cloth Lemebel leaves behind faint blood-colored footprints: a tribute to all the homosexuals and dissident feminists who lost their lives in that place.

On December 10th of 2006, dictator Augusto Pinochet died with a legacy of human rights violations and impunity, while the streets of the country, mainly the Metropolitan Region, were the scene of celebration of the Chilean people.