Juli 17th. of 2025 FILLKE PEWMA (Dreams), in Mapudungun, takes place in Santiago de Chile in the year of 2092 Teatro del Puente
From 8 November 2025 the Wereldmuseum Leiden, in collaboration with the Mapuche communities (EPEW Collective and Stichting FOLIL), presents the art installation Fillke Pewma. For the Mapuche, dreams are a source of knowledge and connection with ancestors and the future. The installation combines textiles, wood and photographs from the museum's collection, transformed into new dreamscapes. In addition to the installation, there will be workshops and a public lecture on photography, textiles, restoration and reciprocity. This programme has been made possible in collaboration with Sheffield University, Kaikoesie Foundation and Indigenous Knowledge Centre (IKC).
Set in stone? “Desired whiteness” and the urban space: A collaborative research in (post) colonial Chile investigates ideologies of whiteness, their relations to urban socio-material spaces and Indigenous counter-narratives. Set in Stone? is an interdisciplinary research between social anthropology, urban studies, architecture, history and art. The research is developed through a collaboration between the University of Sheffield (UK) and the Mapuche organization Fundación Colectivo Epew.
From an anti-racist and anti-colonial stance, the project aims to make visible processes of racialisation linked to an ideology of whitening that is materialized and perpetuated in urban spaces. The research-creation process was developed in dialogue with the Mapocho River running through the central sectors of Santiago, characterized by colonial architecture, republican monuments and ‘tense’ spaces for national identity and political movements. In this creative process two figures played a key role: a buried arm of the river - which today is the Alameda street-, and the Mapuche concept of pewma (dreams) that reconfigured times, spaces, and imaginary. Both elements question colonial continuity, but also focus on the political force of imagination and the staging of alternative (urban) futures.
Site-specific performance FILLKE PEWMA:
FILLKE PEWMA in Mapuche language means dreams. It is a site-specific theater play that travels alongside the Mapocho river, next to the Teatro del Puente, developing a journey against time through the act of walking, audio content and digital technology. Using tools such as maps, interactive audio and augmented reality installations, the materialism of the city and the bodies of the audience expand and connect with the different layers of local history.
Moving between a future submerged in the waters and the past before Santiago was called Santiago, the piece encounters the dreams of the living and also of the dead who inhabited the city, opening up a space for other possible imaginations together with the public.
Short review:
FILLKE PEWMA (Dreams), in the Mapudungun language, takes place in Santiago de Chile in the year 2092.
It has rained 40 days and 40 nights. The emergency has left several areas of the country without connection and the Mapocho River threatens to search for its lost brother, who disappeared during the Spanish colony. The last survivors are looking for a chance to stay alive, while remembering their dreams and the ancient stories that announced the flood.
Will we survive the waters? As in a pewma, we will become fish, and guided by different characters, through different spaces and temporaries, we will go downstream, while the river makes the dream of recovering its lost course come true.
14 - 22 June 2025, Santiago (Teatro del Puente)
Director: Roberto Cayuqueo Martínez
Assistant director: Rayen Morales Cayupan
Research: Olivia Casagrande, Claudio Alvarado Lincopi, Roberto Cayuqueo Martínez.
Production: Camila Velásquez Durán
Integral design: Rayen Morales Cayupan
Costume design: Son de Pérez
Installation: Katerina Quintulem, José Pérez
Digital design: Alejandro Orellana Paredes, Eleonora Giannini
Sound design: Dante Sena Miranda
Illustration design: Millaray Garrido
Cast: Luis Dubó, Rallen Montenegro, Roberto Cayuqueo, Javiera Cayupan Díaz, Noelia Coñuenao Huina, José Pérez