Francisco Zegers wrote the introduction to Desacato (Disobedience), the book about Lotty Rosenfeld, which he edited. Zegers begins by explaining that Desacato is about Rosenfeld’s work, how it was produced, and the interpretations it suggests in the places where she has created it. He goes on to describe Rosenfeld’s interventions and how she performed them in various locations in order to challenge established ideas about art, signs, order, and power. He later discusses her involvement in the Escena de Avanzada, the movement to which other contributors to the book also belonged. Zegers ends his essay by returning to the book’s objectives and its place within the critical context of contemporary art, questioning the role of the artist and the viewer or recipient of the artist’s work.

Francisco Zegers (1953–2012) was a visual artist and an editor. As such, he played a key role in the writing scene that emerged alongside the contemporary art scene in Chile during the 1980s and 1990s. He worked on many publications, including catalogues, artists’ books, and others that, because of their hybrid nature, are harder to classify. Notable among his projects were: Cuerpo Correccional (1980) by Carlos Leppe (1952–2015) and Nelly Richard (b. 1948); Pinturas Aeropostales (1985) by Eugenio Dittborn (b. 1943) [see Correcaminos (doc. 735214) by Dittborn; Una política (doc. 735205) by Gonzalo Muñoz; Por miradas (doc. 735231) by Gonzalo Millán];  La wik'uña (1990) by the artist Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948); and the catalogue for the exhibition Cuatro artistas chilenos en el CAYC (1985). [See the following texts from the catalogue: “Alfredo Jaar: Para América Latina espacios de reflexión” (doc. 734782) by Adriana Valdés; “Gonzalo Díaz: El Kilómetro cientocuatro” (doc. 734722) by Justo Pastor Mellado; “Carlos Leppe: Nota sobre la obra de Leppe” (doc. 734807) and “Eugenio Dittborn: Doblemente geográfico. A propósito de la pintura postal” (doc. 734740), both by Nelly Richard]. As an editor, Zegers helped publish works whose experimental nature would normally have disqualified them, especially in the complex environment created by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–90).

Zegers did not work exclusively with artists and writers associated with the Escena de Avanzada, the term coined by the theorist and cultural critic Nelly Richard. She has pointed out that Zegers was her first editor and that she was able to publish her work thanks to his boldness; he was therefore a key figure in her life as an author. In this introduction, written for the book about Rosenfeld, we can read Zegers’s opinion of the Avanzada, since he includes the artist’s work under the movement’s umbrella of reading and meaning. He notes the movement’s unofficial role in an authoritarian society, and its analytical approach to artistic matters and the connection between art and society. He also assesses the movement’s ability to bring about a renewal of languages and propose new images, which he addresses in his review. It should be noted that the Avanzada’s experimentation transcended the limits of the frame to explore installation, video, and the use of the human body and the city as art supports.     

Desacato is an important book that sheds a great deal of light on Rosenfeld’s art, since it includes a variety of theoretical opinions that provide interpretations of her work and the various videos that she created to record her projects. This document helps to understand her work from both an interpretative and a material perspective. The writers who contributed to the book were Nelly Richard, the poet Raúl Zurita (b. 1950), the writers Diamela Eltit (b. 1949) and María Eugenia Brito (b. 1950), and the poet Gonzalo Muñoz (b. 1956). The book also includes the artist’s comments about her works, an excerpt from a conversation she had with the Cuban poet Severo Sarduy (1937–1993), a timeline of her art actions, and a videography.