Chaco 2025 Brings 50-Plus Galleries Under One Roof in Santiago, Betting on Regional Chile and New Collectors
SANTIAGO — Chile Arte Contemporáneo (Chaco) has returned for its 16th edition with more than 50 galleries gathered in Santiago through March 29, positioning itself as the country’s only international contemporary art fair and a gateway between Chile’s scene and a wider network of collectors, curators, artists, and dealers.
The fair’s organizing premise this year is scale without sprawl: an event compact enough to feel navigable, yet broad enough to suggest a national portrait. “When we make a fair, we make a national fair an international fair,” Nicolás Guilisasti Mitarakis, Chaco’s project coordinator, said, describing an effort to represent “the whole country, not only the capital.” Chaco’s exhibitor mix spans 11 countries and six regions of Chile, “from the Atacama Desert to Patagonia,” he added.
That emphasis on geography and visibility is reflected in the fair’s floor, where Chilean galleries and galleries presenting Chilean contemporary artists form a noticeable through line. The most arresting booths, however, are not necessarily the most polished. Several exhibitors are leaning into a rougher, more experimental register, using the art-fair stand as a site for installation and risk.
Near the entrance, Valparaíso-based artist Fernando Andreo Castro has been given a solo stand with Judas Galería after winning the 2025 Premio de Residencia Mac last year, one of several prizes associated with Chaco. Castro has stripped back the booth’s surfaces to reveal the interior structure of its walls, turning the stand itself into an immersive environment. The gesture also reads as a deliberate echo of his concurrent solo exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, on view through April 26, creating a parallel experience between the fair and the Universidad de Chile-affiliated museum.
Other stands nearby pursue similarly alternative strategies. Hermès, a Santiago gallery described as a local residency and a space for artists from the Palestinian diaspora, has assembled a large composite flag from 100-by-60-cm flags made by 41 Brazilian artists. The works are strung across two overlapping wire racks that line the booth’s interior. The display is visually commanding, though it comes with a trade-off: some pieces recede into the back of the structure, and visitors cannot flip through the fiber works as they might in a more conventional presentation.
Not every standout booth is built on disruption. Some of the fair’s strongest presentations are straightforward, market-facing proposals executed with clarity. Among them is Aninat Galería, widely regarded as Chile’s longest-running contemporary art gallery. The Miami-based Mahara + Co is also using Chaco to stage a cross-regional roster, showing artists including Amanda Linares (from Cuba); Lucas Estévez, Augusta Lecaros, and Samuel Dominguez (from Chile); Pablo Matute (from the US); Gonzalo Hernandez and Zonia Zena (from Peru); and Karlo Andrei Ibarra (from Puerto Rico).
Pricing across the fair is calibrated to lower the threshold for first-time buyers. Organizers have encouraged galleries to offer smaller, easily transportable works, and several booths include pieces priced under $1,000. Larger works, meanwhile, are often listed around $5,000 — a level that signals an intentional bid to widen the collector base beyond established patrons.
Guilisasti framed that strategy as central to Chaco’s identity. “The fair is not just for the collectors, the museums, but also for normal people, the people who come on the weekend,” he said, arguing that visitors arrive not only to buy but to understand what is being made across the country. He pointed to the fair’s ability to generate new relationships for major players as well: Isabel Aninat, he noted, returns annually because “every single year, she meets 20 new collectors she has never met before.”
In the wider ecosystem of Latin American fairs, Chaco remains modest in scale compared with Mexico City’s Zona Maco or Buenos Aires’s arteBA, and that smaller footprint contributes to an intimate atmosphere. It also makes room for art collectives and alternative spaces from across the region — perspectives that can be priced out of larger international fairs by participation costs.
Chaco’s structure is shaped, in part, by its funding model. The fair receives support from Chile’s cultural ministry, and it does not rely on the kind of private sponsorship that often underwrites the rapid expansion of global art fairs. Still, the fair’s appeal lies less in spectacle than in range: a concentrated view of young artists and ambitious practices, presented in a format that aims to be legible to seasoned collectors and weekend visitors alike.
With Santiago’s museum calendar running in parallel — including Castro’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo — Chaco’s 16th edition underscores a familiar but increasingly consequential proposition for the region: that a fair can function not only as a marketplace, but as a civic snapshot of contemporary culture in motion.
