Tim Vin - Los Selknam

The Selk’nam are an Indigenous people originating from the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, long said to have vanished following the devastating acts of colonization. They practiced a foundational ritual known as the "Ceremonia del Hain," represented here through drawings treated as imprints or as archives etched in time. The Selk’nam are an Indigenous people originating from the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, long said to have vanished following the devastating acts of colonization. Today, their descendants are reclaiming recognition for their existence and their culture. They practiced a foundational ritual known as the "Ceremonia del Hain," represented here through drawings treated as imprints or as archives etched in time. This project began three years ago when I first discovered the history of the Selk'nam people. As I delved into their past, I was quickly confronted with a certain reality: the representation of their culture is often reduced to a shallow aesthetic, nearly stripped of its depth and largely forgotten. As a Northern European, I had to read, research, document, decipher, and attempt to translate in order to lift a corner of the mystical veil surrounding them. They had a territory; they hunted and gathered; they had their dead whom they buried; they were alive. We have lost most of these traces. What remains today of a people whose tradition was primarily oral? Through this work, I have sought to express a sense of humanity by capturing some of their gestures, allowing myself for a brief moment to "play" the archivist of a Selk’nam memory—while respecting the secret that was so vital to them, and has now become so to me.