Marcelo Silva Fuentes (1973) is a Chilean artist who works in areas as design, photography, illustration, painting, animation, videography and music.
He grew up in Valparaiso, a city which, in some way, sparked his early interest in drawing and inspired his first photographs. Influenced by his mother (who had a discrete career as a singer in the 60`) Marcelo geted involved into the music scene in the middle 90´.
He received his academic degree as industrial designer in the University of Valparaiso in 1996 and moves to southern Chile to establish "Klee®" the visual communications studio that he owns, until today, with his wife the designer Pilar Ocampo.
In 2005 under the name of "Emesilva" he publish his first solo album "Home Sweet Home". In 2006 obtains an honorable mention in the Lucie Awards in Los Angeles, California. In 2009 obtains the first place in the industrial category of the International Photography Awards in New York .
In addition to working as creative director of his own agency, he has worked as a professor in the design school of the UST and as an advisor in research projects at the ULA. In 2012, he moves to live in Easter Island for one year. Deeply moved by the harsh tales of an almost extinct ethnic group, Rapa Nui marks the start of his interest in the native peoples who inhabited the chilean pre-hispanic territory. "The Navel of the World" was his first project about this issue.
In 2014 he participate in the shooting of the documentary film "Te Kuhane O Te Tupuna" (The Spirit of the Ancestors)”, a deep glance into the situation of Rapa Nui culture and the hundreds of artistic and ceremonial pieces (including some human remains) keeped by the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris and the British Museum in London. That year he also worked in "Shakinguen" a photographic series about williche artisans who continue using ancestral techniques in their creations in a indigenous reservation in the south of Chile.
In 2015 attended classes in lighting in the EAF (Argentine School of Photography).
Marcelo works continuously photographing different
ethnic groups through Chile, but along the time he has been extending that idea to other countries, making portraits as well shooting life routines in places as Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.
ethnic groups through Chile, but along the time he has been extending that idea to other countries, making portraits as well shooting life routines in places as Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.
In 2019 began the short film series titled "My Window Time", a static camera recording a time lapses in a super wide angle from his studio window for a whole year. In 2020 his nanofilm "Karma" is part of the official selection in the "Berlin Flash Film Festival", the same year his short documentary "Linemen" gets the Silver Award in the "Spotlight Documentary Film Award" . In 2023 his photography "17 and a half monks" awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2023 edition of the International Photography Awards.