AL Works 

For the first time in China, Felipe Valdivia showed his work with a solo exhibition named “The Sound of Water”. The exhibition ran from June 1 - 30, 2019 at the Biblioteca Cervantes, and was organized by ALWorks in collaboration with the General Consulate of Chile in Shanghai and Biblioteca Cervantes Shanghai. 

Felipe Valdivia Infante is a self-taught artist who enjoys career success as a digital creative director. His artwork mixes embroidery, sewing machine collage drawing, watercolor and written word on canvasses made of found pieces of fabrics stitched together with yarn and wool threads creating landscapes, mixed with written words and images, inspired by his own imagination and everyday life. The work of Felipe Valdivia is a sort of a mixture of fragments, bits and pieces of experiences that are so vivid as if the viewer could perceive from the very artist's mind. They invite to participate in a process that does not show any intention to be ever finished.

Valdivia's art process is both playful and disciplined, it accepts mistakes, like the blunders in working an embroidery stitch as imperfections, he says, have a human quality. When machines stop if facing an error, the artist takes advantage of it as a second chance at getting better, an opportunity for a further step in the creative process. 

It's the practice of the imperfection that occupied the first floor of the Biblioteca Miguel de Cervantes in Shanghai: a holistic installation of texts and textiles, aesthetics that beckon the viewer to a childlike state of wonder.