The Museo Moderno is proud to present the first solo show in a museum in Argentina by young artist Celina Eceiza (Tandil, 1988). This ambitious, immersive project has been wholly produced by the Moderno. Ofrenda [Offering] presents a way of inhabiting a space as if the architecture were a body, breathing erratically, shaking and changing states as you pass from one room to the next. The rigidity of the building collapses as the walls are draped in thousands of metres of fabric, joined together through the collective and timeless action of sewing, until they form a single smooth surface, sensitive to the slightest change.
A metabolic force governs the growth of Eceiza’s work, which involves paintings, drawings, and sculptures, both tiny and colossal in scale, as laborious as they are elementary. In them, the artist combines handcrafted textile techniques and processes such as patchwork, collages made of collected objects and, more recently, plaster and chalk pastels, which give her images a new sense of fluidity. Her compositions are filled with soft shapes, fragments of bodies undergoing transformations, flowers and fruits in the best still life tradition. They are interwoven with references to 20th century art movements as well as several layers of cultural history, including Greco-Roman antiquity, early Christianity, and the hippy movement of the 1960s.
Celina Eceiza’s installations invite you to partake in pleasant, porous and expansive environments. Constructed as if they were states of mind, these spaces yearn to be experienced by a body that forgets its rational nature and gives way to the pure will of sensitive knowledge. This intimate and, at the same time, collective experience displays its political power by presenting art as a living form that must be nurtured in order to reveal new possible links between humans.
Curated by: Jimena Ferreiro
Production manager: Iván Rösler
Production: Julieta Potenze
Special aknowledgements: Florencia Ferrari Milano, Román Ramírez, Melina Chaldú, Aurea Chiarle Meissinger, Rocío Englender, Germán Gáspari, Soledad Manrique Goldsack, Paula Pellejero, Alejandro Rossetti, Germán Sandoval, Juan Valenti, Amparo Viñales and Nicolás Zúñiga
Celina Eceiza (Tandil, 1988) studied Visual Arts at the National University of the Arts (UNA). She has been awarded training grants from the National Fund for the Arts (2013), Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre (2013), and Mundo Dios (2014). In 2016, she was selected as an agent for the Artistic Research Centre (CIA), and in 2024, she participated in the international Art Omi residency, in New York.
Her numerous solo exhibitions include La conquista del reino de los miedos [Conquering the Realm of Fear], curated by Alejandra Aguado and Solana Viamonte (Móvil-Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, 2019), Villa Celina (Moria Galería, Buenos Aires, 2021), Personas que creo haber visto [People I Think I Have Seen] (Salón Acme–Moria Galería, Mexico City, Mexico, 2022), Desvelo [Sleeplessnes], curated by Carla Barbero (Moria Galería, Buenos Aires, 2023).
She has participated in such major collective projects as the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, Nebraska, United States, 2021–2022), I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality (UB Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, United States, 2022–2023), No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá [I’m Not From Here, and I’m Not From There] (Instituto Tele Arte, Santiago, Chile, 2023), and the First Biennial of Textile Art (Centro de Extensión del Instituto Nacional [CEINA], Santiago, Chile, 2023).
Her work has been selected in several competitions, such as the Braque Prize in 2019 and the National Salon of Rosario in 2022. She received First Prize for Painting from the Central Bank in 2020 and the diploma of merit in Textile Art in the Konex Prize. In 2018, her first novel, El falsificador [The Counterfeiter], was published by Tammy Metzler’s. Her work features in the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires collection and in other important public and private collections. She lives and works in Buenos Aires.