Revista de Antropología Visual

This research focuses on the description and understanding of the symbolic use made by Mapuche organizations in relation to their ethnicity icons. The icons we have chosen as relevant to this work are those used by the organizations in the living spaces they occupy. As these have meant from their installation on the walls of their groups, which are the chosen ones and how they mean in terms of cultural identity in those specific exhibition contexts. We have used as a theoretical frame of reference the contributions of J. L. Austin and J. Searle in the field of language, which operationalized in the domain of images have allowed us to penetrate comprehensively into this symbolic universe.