Tania Fuenzalida Diaz

Biography

Since 2001, I have lived near the beautiful mountain range that is the Pyrenees and started a family here.
I was born in 1968, on that long strip of land between the Andes and the Pacific. After the coup d’état in 1973 my family went into exile in the Languedoc region of France. In 1981, we moved to Mozambique,

a country going through a huge process of change and beset by destructive guerilla warfare. In 1983, my parents sent us to the safety of Paris; I was sixteen and wanted to study at the Paris school of fine art.
In 1984, despite the dictatorship, we moved back to Chile and went
to live off the earth near Santiago. But Chile was still a place of
violence and family breakups and when I turned 18 I decided to come
back to France to study photography, film and video and, finally,
plastic arts at the university. Following my last stay in Chile, I was in
distress, adrift. Life pushed me back to Languedoc and, like a ship,

I was shipwrecked. I quit my studies and at last touched the bottom.
Painting became my support, it told my story. It became a secret
guide, helping me to weave links, and find my Amerindian roots that

I had rejected for too long. Painting not as an outlet but as a lighthouse, guiding and lighting my buried dreams. Painting was also a challenge to face the world as I am, with my weaknesses and strengths. It took me twenty years of painting and existential shakeups to reach maturity and trust in my creative drive.
Creating has been the master word of my way through life.