The visual artist Juan Downey (1940–1993) was born in Chile but moved to New York in the late 1970s. He was a pioneer in video art, in Chile and beyond, and was among those who were experimenting in that field at that point in time. His work explored the possibilities of the visual and communications media, the mass media, and the concept of representation, always with an eye on the underlying narratives of Western culture. He produced two major video series: Trans América (1973–77) and El ojo pensante (The Thinking Eye, 1974–89).
In Chile in the 1980s, during a time of economic opportunity and political resistance to the authoritarian military dictatorship, a number of artists, such as Carlos Leppe, Diamela Eltit, Lotty Rosenfeld, Eugenio Dittborn, Gonzalo Mezza, and Alfredo Jaar, among others, began working with video. Some used it as a way to create a record of their work, others used it to produce documentary works. Juan Downey used the new technology in daring, experimental ways to create an artistic language that was based on the medium’s inherent potential.
The evolution and success of Chilean video art owed a great deal to exhibition spaces such as the Festival Franco-Chileno de Video Arte (begun in 1981), which greatly boosted the medium’s visibility and became the premier center for audiovisual experimentation, the only one of its kind in Latin America.