“We don’t belong here at all,” says Gunnar Dinesen to his daughter in the 2014 film, Jauja, written and directed by Lisandro Alonso. Dinesen, played by Viggo Mortensen, is a 19th-century Danish army captain posted in the preternatural Patagonian landscape. Alonso uses the region, often called “the end of the world,” as a metaphorical substitute for the imaginary paradise referred to as Jauja (pronounced “how-ha”) in Spanish myth, based on the tales 16th-century Spanish conquistadors upon discovering the verdant lands of what is now Peru. The film is ostensibly about a father on a quest to find his daughter, but evolves into a story about searching — for home, power, freedom, in short, something else, something better. This essential human belief in and longing for a better life have fueled much of history’s adventures and expeditions, as well as the countless journeys made by immigrants seeking to escape any number of oppressions. In her exhibition titled Jauja at Y Gallery, Manuela Viera-Gallo uses the legend of Jauja as a platform from which to examine both the political and mythological ramifications of an idealized fantasy world.
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