In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and artistic aspects of what she called the Escena de Avanzada. While explaining how that avant-garde movement took shape during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–90)—when words such as “closure,” “neglect,” “impoverishment,” and “fragmentation” were an integral part of the lexicon of the time—Richard makes a number of thoughtful, wide-ranging observations. She mentions a certain amount of friction between the Avanzada movement and a couple of cultural and political opposition groups that were focused on a renewal of democracy. In this polarized environment split between art and society, Richard seeks to compare and contrast sociological conditions in Chile with the militant art of the 1970s and 1980s.   

The exhibition Cirugía plástica / Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Plastic Surgery / A New Society for the Visual Arts) ran from September 14 to October 28, 1989, in Berlin. The exhibition included works that reflected the subjects and approaches addressed by contemporary Chilean art. The event therefore brought together, for the first time, works by more than twenty Chilean artists that showed the heterogeneity of the country’s art in terms of image, theme, and discourse. Several trends were on display there. Carlos Leppe, Gonzalo Díaz, Eugenio Dittborn, Lotty Rosenfeld, Virginia Errázuriz, and Francisco Brugnoli represented the various ideas being explored by the Escena de Avanzada. The exhibition also included works by young artists such as Bruna Truffa, Rodrigo Cabezas, Ciro Beltrán, and Mario Soro, among others.

Critics and theorists Francisco Brugnoli, Justo Pastor Mellado, Gonzalo Muñoz, Pablo Oyarzún, and Nelly Richard contributed essays to the catalogue for this exhibition.

Originally from France, Nelly Richard (b. 1948) arrived in Chile in 1970, during the early days of the Unidad Popular government and three years before the fascist coup d’état. She has worked as a cultural theorist, art critic, essayist, and curator. She founded the magazine Revista de Crítica Cultural and has authored many books, including Abismos temporales (Temporal Abysses) (2018), Residuos y metáforas: ensayos de crítica cultural sobre el Chile de la transición (Waste Materials and Metaphors: Cultural Critiques on Chile During the Transition) (1998), La insubordinación de los signos: cambio político, transformaciones culturales y poéticas de la crisis (The Insubordination of Signs: Political Change, Cultural Transformations, and Poetics of the Crisis) (1994), and Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile Since 1973 (1986). In the wake of the 1973 coup, Richard became a pivotal figure in the local art scene by fostering debate about Chilean culture and acting as a theorist for what became known as the Escena de Avanzada. A distinguished intellectual, she has written extensively about feminist theory, philosophy, literary criticism, and art history.