18 Minutes from the Sun

This exhibition presenting the work of almost one hundred Argentinian artists, contemporary and historical, with indigenous and Western cultural roots, began with a question: can we utilise our relationship with the sky to retrace colonial narratives?

The stars drew the maps of the heavens that guided Europeans across the sea. And they guided the conquistadors to a continent they were ignorant of. The same stars had, from time immemorial, illumined all communities and shown them how to find their way around, where to settle, when to leave, when to sow or when to hunt, following the cycles of nature in a sustainable relationship with the planet. Human exploration of the heavens has opened up questions around space which should have no owners but may be conquered by big corporations. What means do we have to access the cosmos? Can the space outside ourselves act as a mirror to look at ourselves from the outside and re-imagine ourselves socially and politically? What sustainable and imaginative contributions to exploration can we in the South offer?

The first gallery focuses on the indigenous perspective of heaven and earth as a system of interrelationships, ascents and descents, reflections and reversals. It presents not only myths and models of the cosmos but their relations with the territory and its conflicts: genocides, deforestation, wildfires.

The second gallery presents utopias and dystopias in which Latin American artistic roots are in conversation with the universal languages of abstraction and their scientific and spiritual utopias, exposing the popular dissemination of the conquest of space during the Cold War and condemning corporate extractivism.

8 minutes 30 seconds is the time it takes for sunlight, the source of life on our planet, to reach the Earth.
A 18′ del sol [18′ from the Sun] is the title of an album by Luis Alberto Spinetta. Its displaced coordinates signal a more distant point in space, somewhere between Mars and Jupiter.

Artists: Erik Arazi, Nicolás Bacal, Gonzalo Beccar Varela, Antonio Berni, Diego Bianchi, Erica Bohm, Martha Boto, Manuel Brandazza, Adriana Bustos, Colectivo Cabezudxs, Feliciano Centurión, Mauricio Cerbellera, Germaine Derbecq, Sonia Delaunay, Sebastián Diaz Morales, Diana Dowek, Faivovich & Goldberg, Beatriz Ferreyra, Pauline Fondevila, Lucio Fontana, Raquel Forner, Gertrudis Frischenschlager, Daniel García, Carlos Luis García Bes, Maia Gattás Vargas, Noemí Gerstein, Sebastián Gordín, Diego Gravinese, Víctor Grippo, Alberto Greco, Silvia Gurfein, Miguel Harte, Alberto Heredia, Alicia Herrero, Alfredo Hlito, Agustín Inchausti, Enio Iommi, Vassily Kandinski, Gyula Kosice, Fernanda Laguna, José Luis Landet, Benito Laren, Daniel Leber, Lux Lindner, Raúl Lozza, Lea Lublin, Víctor Magariños D., Liliana Maresca, Juan Melé, Sebastián Mercado, Estanislao Mijalichen, Mauro Millán, Emiliano Miliyo, Ad Minoliti, Eduardo Molinari, Eduardo Navarro, Héctor G. Oesterheld, Ogwa, Martha Peluffo, Alicia Penalba, Andrés Pereira Paz, Emilio Pettoruti, Francis Picabia, Alberto Pilone, Micaela Piñero, Rogelio Polesello, Marcelo Pombo, Emilio Renart, Ingrid Roddick, Federico Roldán Vukonich, Christian Román, Hernán Salvo, Damián Santa Cruz, Rubén Santantonín, Mario Scorzelli, Francisco Solano López, Xul Solar, Cecilia Sosa, Grete Stern, Axel Strachnoy, Diana Teira, Julián Terán, Colectivo Thañí/Viene del monte, Andrés Toro, Joaquín Torres García, Rodrigo Túnica, Adrián Unger, Gregorio Vardánega, Mariano dal Verme, José Villalonga, Wüsüwül Wirka A Pana, Osías Yanov, Yente

Curated by: Javier Villa and Marcos Krämer
Exhibition Design: Iván Rösler
Production: Julieta Potenze