The Patagonian fences, political actors par excellence, date back to the early colonizers, who settled in the region at the end of the nineteenth century. They divide, limit, control, and order the lives of humans and animals alike. The wooden fences of this southern region, built using local techniques and materials, not only mark the boundaries of property, humans, and animals, but also the border between Chile and Argentina. To “jump the fence” has more than one connotation:

Fences
To carry out the tasks, you need to have some basic facilities that allow you to stop, herd, shelter, measure, control and feed livestock. These constructs are known by the name of fences. In areas with a shortage of wood wire fences predominate, built with wooden posts and wire strands between them. They parcel land and demarcate the boundaries of property, and they also function as a border with Argentina.11Leonel Galindo, Aisén Voices and Customs. Santiago: Ediciones Orígenes, 2001.

The “infinite” fences that extend through the vast territory occasionally give way to gates, a doorway to entry and exit from one zone to another. In the locality of El Blanco, in Patagonia, the German artist Olaf Holzapfel (born 1969) reproduced the typical gate using the local ñirre (the Antarctic beech, or Nothofagus antarctica) and cross (X) design, a site-specific intervention. The artist, like a contemporary archaeologist, traced the path of the material culture along the territory. Over the past two years, Holzapfel has visited Patagonia a number of times, working with local carpenters and learning construction techniques, from the axe to sawmilling. By approaching the territory as a community, a living archive, a code to be deciphered, his art has enabled an understanding of history beyond the official narratives. Holzapfel’s art re-enacts the fundamental materiality of modern Patagonian space.

Patagonia has often been described as a “lonely” and “uninhabited” territory, blinding visitors to the long presence of indigenous communities inhabiting the region, including the Tehuelches, Alacalufes, and Chonos. Indigenous communities had neither fences marking private property nor nations in the Western sense. Their houses were temporary tents. When Magellan sighted these lands for the first time in 1520, he saw “nothing but footprints.” Because of their large feet covered by guanaco skins, Magellan referred to the Tehuelches as “Patagones” (big feet), a name that has been used since then for the entire region. Rather than enjoying a peaceful coexistence, the indigenous people were displaced from the territory, threatened by civilization and large livestock enterprises, as Alberto Maria de Agostini wrote in 1945:

Today civilization, with all its modern improvements, has rapidly invaded the vast Patagonian plains, populating them with thousands of sheep, laying roads, and building farms and villages, it is hard to remember that these same plains, a few decades ago, belonged entirely to those famous giant indigenous peoples [Tehuelches].22Alberto María de Agostini, Andes Patagónicos: Viajes de Exploración a la Cordillera Patagónica Austral. Buenos Aires: Tall. Gráf de G. Kraft, 1945, p. 377.

Modern fences have been imposed over the indigenous footprints over the course of the twentieth century, while, paradoxically, the name of the region, derived from the language of the indigenous people, has remained. Currently, Patagonia is promoted as a pristine and immutable landscape in the tourist discourse. The artwork “Having a Gate” by Holzapfel challenges this assumption. By reproducing a fence, the human intervention in the territory reveals itself, bringing recognition to the disenfranchisement of indigenous people. The landscape is no longer merely natural. It is a cultural and contested space, alerting us to one of the major questions of the Anthropocene, the now obsolete difference between nature and culture.