Magic in the Desert is a VR/MR experience told through Indigenous Cacique (Chief) Modesto Inakayal’s time in captivity in the Museum of La Plata in Buenos Aires. It’s an immersive journey through the complicated history of Argentina’s attempt to form its national identity on the extermination of the Indigenous people during the rise of physical anthropology and racial science in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries.

At the center of this drama is the story of Cacique Inakayal. One of the most notable Indigenous leaders of the Mapuche Tehuelche people. Inakayal was taken prisoner in 1884, held with his family, studied, displayed, and later died, by suicide, in captivity as a part of Buenos Aires’ Museum of La Plata’s anthropological “collection.”

In this VR/MR room-scale experience, participants are transported along in real museum and magic realist spaces to learn the history and experience the ancestral and spiritual practices of the Mapuche Techuelche culture.

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