34 artists from Argentina
Adentro no hay más que una morada [Within There Is but One Abode] brings together recent works by thirty-four artists from across Argentina. These artists share a revealed desire to channel and strengthen their connection with the environment, be it material, intangible or even spiritual. Produced mainly in the last couple of years and steeped in the experience of isolation and rootedness into which we have been plunged by the pandemic, their works function as declarations of existence. They are ways of asserting we are alive through the production of signs, signals and actions on the world around us, as well as forms and images that express the desire to strengthen the bonds with our intimate worlds, with others and with what transcends us.
The exhibition’s title paraphrases a line from Argentinian poet Olga Orozco’s poem, ‘Desdoblamiento en máscara de todos’ [Doubling Out Into a Mask for All]: ‘Desde adentro de todos no hay más que una morada’ [From within everyone there is but one abode]. This line expresses the impossibility of distinguishing between the notions of existing and inhabiting. The works in the exhibition conjure this idea into our consciousness through images, many of which reinforce the fundamental value of identity and a sense of belonging. These works demonstrate that the individual’s relationship to their environment is a reciprocal one. Even those presented to us in the form of signs, geometries and other universal-seeming abstractions leave us in no doubt that they arise from a single locality and a single intimacy.
Some of the works in the exhibition seek to make the figure of the human body and the traces of the life-pulse recognisable in the objects and spaces; others make their presence felt by rearranging everyday objects and charging them with affective ritual value. Many of the artists use natural and found materials as a basic conduit for self-expression and show an interest in using forms of artistic production drawn from ancestral traditions and knowledge inherited or learned in community. Repositories of experiences, energy, exercises, labours and messages, all these works reveal that we can, from our most inner worlds, summon our power to transform reality while, at the same time, inviting us to think about rootedness as a form of resistance.
The stillness and confinement caused by the pandemic has momentarily made us invisible to the public sphere. These works are the other face of this impossibility of being seen. Through gestures, reflections and sensitive research into technology, through the production of new languages, the arrangement of refuse in the form of totems or talismans, or the will to penetrate other materialities and even the landscape itself, they become powerful ways of saying ‘I am here.’
Artists: Carlos Aguirre (Arroyo Seco, Santa Fe, 1981), Blas Aparecido (Sauce, Corrientes, 1976), Erik Arazi (CABA, 1990), Gonzalo Beccar Varela (Tigre, Buenos Aires, 1983), Gala Berger (Villa Gesell, Buenos Aires, 1983), Florencia Caiazza (Olivos, Buenos Aires, 1982), Eugenia Calvo (Rosario, Santa Fe, 1976), Nacha Canvas (Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, 1990), Jimena Croceri (Cutral-Có, Neuquén, 1981), Soledad Dahbar (Salta, Salta, 1976), Benjamín Felice (San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, 1990), Dana Ferrari (CABA, 1988), Carolina Fusilier (CABA, 1985), Denise Groesman (CABA, 1989), María Guerrieri (CABA, 1973), Juan Gugger (Deán Funes, Córdoba, 1986), Nina Kovensky (CABA, 1993), Lucrecia Lionti (San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, 1985), Alejandra Mizrahi (San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, 1981), Florencia Palacios (Sunchales, Santa Fe, 1994), Mauricio Poblete (Mendoza, Mendoza, 1989), Lucía Reissig (CABA, 1994) y Bernardo Zabalaga (Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1978), Daniela Rodi (Santa Rosa, La Pampa, 1980), Federico Roldán Vukonich (Paraná, Entre Ríos, 1993), Florencia Sadir (Salta, Salta, 1991), Matías Tomás (San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, 1990), Agustina Triquell (Córdoba, Córdoba, 1983), Florencia Vallejos (Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, 1993), Francisco Vázquez Murillo (Rosario, Santa Fe, 1980), Antonio Villa (Esquel, Chubut, 1989), Santiago Villanueva (Azul, Buenos Aires, 1990), Agustina Wetzel (Corrientes, Corrientes, 1988), Ana Won (San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, 1989)
Curated by: Alejandra Aguado
This exhibition is suppported by
Alejandra Mizrahi at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The work of Alejandra Mizrahi is inspired by craft methods of textile production in her region. She uses them to produce a range of fragments – cloths, weaves and lace – that make visible the infinite possibilities of these construction methods as well as the imprint of the individual and the place where they were produced: they contain information about the tension and regularities with which the body works, her trains of thought and imaginative outbursts and the resources she uses to colour the fabrics, which generally come from the fruits and vegetables she eats. The title, Fantasía aplicada evokes the decorative imaginative world we associate with embroidery but also seeks to reach a universe that might be a fantasy in itself, separate from the traditions that shape this kind of production. The artwork combines a geometry composed of a collection of frames made by Luis Pereyra – a supplier of frames for the community of weavers with whom Mizrahi is associated – that maintain some of the classic forms while also adding more whimsical designs, on which interiors of incredible intimacy and delicacy are embroidered. The fabric, dyed with avocado stones, is sewn, the artist says ‘to the cold, rigid outline of the shape,’ on which ‘flowers, bird silhouettes, lines that go nowhere and nets that catch the emptiness weave the fantasy together.’
Alejandra Mizrahi (San Miguel de Tucumán, 1981) is a Doctor in Philosophy from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, specialising in Art and Design in the area of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Philosophy (2009) and in Aesthetics and Theory of Art (2008) from the same university. She currently lectures at the National University of Tucumán, for the University Technical Degree in Clothing and Textile Design. She has been coordinating workshops on art practices and textile experimentation since 2012. During 2018, she was a scholarship holder on the Argentinian National Ministry of Culture’s Investiga Cultura Programme, at the Museo Nacional de Historia del Traje (National Museum of Costume History). In 2017 and 2018, she participated in Katsuhiko Hibino’s Turn Project, in Buenos Aires and Tokyo. She is part of the Intercampos II Programme (2006), at the Telefónica Foundation. She has participated in art residencies at the Curator residency, in Santa Fe (2014) and the Savvy Contemporary International Residency, in Berlin (2016).
Antonio Villa at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Fiesta de la luna by Antonio Villa is a mobile made from wood gathered in the city of Esquel – where the artist grew up – and industrial and craft incense burners made using the macramé technique. This piece seeks to eliminate the historic tension between art and craft: techniques and materials that have their own symbolic, spiritual and private value have their power enhanced by a sculptural form in which objects on a domestic scale present a new collection of floating symbols that can be interpreted as house, landscape and body simultaneously. The usual purpose of the materials used is to be burned as incense during a mystical ritual, expressing power with their aromas, which lend them an invisible, evocative dimension.
Antonio Villa (Santa Cruz, 1988) is a graduate in Dramaturgy from the Metropolitan School of Dramatic Art, was part of the Artists’ Programme of the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (2017) and a Scholarship Holder in Criticism and Curatorship on the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2018). As an artist and cultural manager, his work crosses contemporary art, writing and theatre. He has premiered theatre plays in Argentina and Mexico as both director and playwright. He curates the Gallinero collection of contemporary drama for the Rara Avis publishing house. As an author, he has published Teatra, in Desde un tacho ediciones, and Paz [Peace], in Libros Drama. He is the director and curator of the Constitución gallery, with Martín Fernández.
Eugenia Calvo at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The work of Eugenia Calvo is renowned for the way in which she uses unusual combinations, uses or organizations of domestic objects to expose the strength and fragility of domestic spaces that are always on the edge of revolt or collapse. Although most of her installations are full of tension – for example groups of furniture that appear in ambiguous states, suspended or subject to pressure – the artwork Hecha para siempre is in a state of absolute repose. The parts of a table and chair sit neatly, entirely disassembled, converting them into resting bodies. Camouflaged by the apparently natural way in which they have been set out, as though ready to be stored away or reassembled, the only sign of life appears in a television placed at their head. Its screen plays a series of faces made up of objects from a family environment that imprint their personality and sensibility on the scene.
Eugenia Calvo (Rosario, 1976) is a graduate in Fine Arts from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. In 2018, after her solo show El inicio del movimiento [The Beginning of Movement], at the Diego Obligado gallery in Rosario, she received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation scholarship. In parallel to numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions, she coordinated the Education Area of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario and is currently a teacher of the project ‘Borrowed School’, at the Manuel Musto Municipal School of Plastic Arts, in Rosario. Among other awards, she received the Gasworks scholarship (2005), the arteBA-Petrobras First Prize (2006), the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Grants and Commission Program (2010) and Special Mention at the Bienal Internacional de Cuenca (2011).
Agustina Triquell at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
“Todo lugar es el centro del mundo” presents a poetic, reflective imaginative world inspired by how communities inhabit a territory. The different elements that make up the artwork – images, objects, documents and videos – were gathered together over a long period when the artist, who was herself settling in an isolated region of the Sierras of Córdoba, formed ties with neighbouring communities to whom she offered photography workshops. The results of her exploration of the alchemical photographic process ended up providing a metaphor for the transformations and imprints of collective bodies. Combined with other material and photographic matter connected to the exercise of habitation, documents, and literary and philosophical texts about access to property, these elements present a reflection on the distance between need, reality, legality and utopia.
Agustina Triquell is an artist, teacher, publisher and social researcher. Her work revolves around the relationships between history, memory, politics and their pedagogies, and articulates poetic investigation and contemporary photographic, publishing and audio-visual production. Since 2020, she has coordinated the Centre for Contemporary Artistic Research/Procedures at the School of Art and Heritage, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, in Buenos Aires, and runs the Asunción Casa Editora publishing house, devoted to publishing research on contemporary photographic practices. Since 2011, she has been part of the Citizenship and Human Rights Programme of the Institute for Economic and Social Development, CLACSO.
Blas Aparecido at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Blas Aparecido’s “Altares portables” are items of clothing embroidered with devotional images that arise from out of what the artist calls a ‘frenzy of faiths’. Sacred and pagan figures that evoke the presence of the Virgin of Itati, Gauchito Gil and Gilda cohabit with numerous other symbols and ornaments to create a kind of shield with which to protect oneself from misery and express faith. Sequins, embroidery, fake pearls, beads and discs combine with personal and found objects and are exhibited with fragments from prayers, poems and thoughts. This vast range of materials and references is sewn together by hand by Aparecido, for whom the embroidery process is also a period of devotion. The coming together of these elements creates desires and promises that transform the clothing and accessories we wear into ‘towers of cosmic energy’ built from out of genuine, personal belief.
Blas Aparecido (Corrientes, 1976) is a graduate in Advertising and Strategic Communications, a Graphic and Advertising Designer, began making artistic interventions in unconventional settings in both public and private spaces in 2013. These have addressed spirituality, religiosity, the diversity of faith, the ritual action of religious syncretism and its manifestations in artistic practice. Among other activities, he has worked as an assistant to Santiago Bengolea on the Gallery Web project and has participated regionally and nationally in solo and collective exhibitions. He currently works in cultural management as coordinator of the El Quiosquito space, in Resistencia, Chaco Province.
Soledad Dahbar at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
A set of geometric shapes rises up in silent proclamation. The artwork Manifestación by Soledad Dahbar is composed of the repetition and grouping of circles, squares and triangles attached to wooden poles to form a group of resting signs that combine artistic and political activism. The proportion of the colours copper, silver and gold reflects the percentages of these minerals in the soil and mountains of northwest Argentina, which are being exploited by massive mining concerns. The way the signs are laid out to form a horizon and silhouette of polychrome mountains symbolizes the return of the metals extracted from the landscape to their original state in the ground. This dimension of the artwork is accompanied by an aesthetic dimension in which simple shapes combine with the bright colours – in resonance with the landscape – and a political one in which the signs act as guardians of a collective treasure.
Soledad Dahbar (Salta, 1976) is studying for a Master’s in Contemporary Latin American Aesthetics at the Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda. Since 2015, she has directed the La Arte visual arts project. In 2021, she was selected for the National Salon of Visual Arts, the 8M Prize and the Amalia Fortabat Prize. She received distinctions at the Andreani Foundation Award (2013) and the 31st Salta Provincial Salon (2012), among others. In 2021, she was awarded the Metropolitan Fund and Patronage and, in 2019, the “Creation” scholarship by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and the Future Platform scholarship by Argentina’s Ministry of Culture. The collaborative projects she has coordinated include the following: Tierra suelta [Loose Earth] (Cachi, Salta, 2017), with Andrea Fernández; Residencia Puente Campamento Vespucio [Residence Bridge Campsite Vespuccio] (General Mosconi, Salta, 2016), with Santiago Gasquet; Residencia telúrica II [Telluric Residence II] (San Carlos, Salta, 2013) and 5 intenciones y 1 defecto [5 Intentions and 1 Defect] (2012). He coordinated the project La Guarda (Salta, 2006-2009) with the artists Ana Benedetti and Roxana Ramos.
Carlos Aguirre at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The work of Carlos Aguirre is composed of a material universe of varied origin. The paper, boxes, metal, branches and wire that appear in his paintings and sculpture together with other more traditional artistic elements are the result a distinctive form of collecting inspired by the beauty of simplicity. This ongoing practice involves discovery, cherishment and reorganization, activity that brings an end to one life cycle of the materials and moves them on to another that lends a modern, compositional quality to his pieces. Infused with a creative, playful energy, materials from the artist’s world of everyday utility cast off their initial function and are reconstituted as colours and shapes in a conceptual order that places emphasis on the uniqueness of each object and their story, revealing an atemporal beauty.
Carlos Aguirre (Santa Fe, 1981) is a Graphic Designer from the Rosario Advanced School of Design, he studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. He trained with artists like Claudia del Río, Marcia Schvartz, Carlos Herrera and others. He has received several grants from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and the Ministry of Culture for training and project development, and has been selected for various salons and competitions in Argentina and abroad. In 2017, he completed an art residency in Treviso, Italy. He has exhibited works in spaces and galleries in Rosario, Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and several Italian cities.
Florencia Palacios at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
A set of stones gathered from the shore of the Setúbal Lagoon in the City of Santa Fe provide the medium for a series of images carved by the artist with painstaking craft. Using a bare minimum of tools, the archaic method contrasts with the images themselves, which are easily recognizable: icons inspired by digital emojis used on social networks in lieu of or as a complement to words. Using one of the oldest mediums known to humanity, the artist imprints contemporary ephemeral images that reflect technological change. In these carvings the emojis appear on their own or in groups to convey simple messages, moods and moments in the day that reflect the isolation during the pandemic that occurred in 2020. These stones, grouped in different patterns, tell stories from a personal and collective experience that will potentially resonate with a vague past or a remote future.
Florencia Palacios (Santa Fe, 1994) is a graduate in Audio-Visual Arts from the Fernando Birri Advanced Film and Audio-visual Arts Institute, Santa Fe, continued her training in crits and workshops such as the ‘Workshop on the Analysis, Production and Accompaniment of Art Projects’, coordinated by Cintia Clara Romero and Maximiliano Peralta, or ‘PALA’, an artists’ training programme at LAVA gallery, coordinated by Nancy Rojas. In 2016, she participated in the El Pasaje contemporary art residency, in Tafí del Valle, Tucumán, and in the ‘2016 Biennial of the Moving Image’ residency, at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. She has staged the exhibitions: Paisaje sintético [Synthetic Landscape], with the collaboration of Renata Zas, at the Garra gallery, in Resistencia, Chaco Province, (2019); Futuro fortuito [Accidental Future], curated by Julio César Estravis, at the Centro Cultural Matienzo, Buenos Aires (2019) and Lo último que se pierde es la conexión [The Last Thing You Lose Is the Connection], at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of the National University of the Littoral, Santa Fe (2018). She has featured in group exhibitions in the Argentinian cities of Rafaela, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, as well as Madrid, Spain, and Kristiansand, Norway.
Florencia Sadir at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The work of Florencia Sadir occurs in intense dialogue with the knowledge accumulated in the community where she lives regarding the cultivation of the land and production of objects and crafts. Her sculptures and installations reduce these objects to their basic forms, adopting formal minimalist strategies to distract from their functionality and create apparently classical and formal compositions that expose their original structure and richness. Sadir’s works in this exhibition, however, combine pure forms with representations of what arises from their link with the earth: the food she grows, the ceramics she makes, the objects of domestic and symbolic value that represent the materials she has access to in her local environment: from wood to guano and wicker. Set out over the earth she works with every day in her garden, these elements compose an essential order she presents as a gesture of gratitude and offering.
Florencia Sadir (Salta, 1991) studied for the Plastic Arts degree at the Faculty of Arts, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. In 2015, she co-founded and co-directed the exhibition project ‘Lateral’, in Tucumán. In 2020, she participated in the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She was awarded a Roberts Scholarship to study at the FLORA School, in Bogotá (Colombia), during 2019, and a 2019 Creation scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes. She has been an Azcuy Award finalist (2020), a winner of the Centro Cultural Recoleta’s RADAR Visuals Award (2017) and winner of the Ópera Prima Award (2016). She has taken part in the URRA Tigre residencies (2017), and the Curator residency, in Santa Fe (2016).
Erik Arazi at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The drawings of Erik Arazi arise out of an impulse to channel his energy, thoughts and states of consciousness, i.e.: a desire to depict movements that exist beyond physical stillness and are thus invisible to other people. Inside, the artist feels as though ‘he moves like an athlete’ and these drawings, made with pencils, marker pens and coffee grounds, reconstruct the imprecise geometry of the circuits along which energy flows. On this occasion, the drawings are silhouettes of two human bodies that can take on multiple internal configurations: a diagram of a meditative order, a representation of the means by which the artist perceives his inner flow and a document of the link between consciousness and absolute forms.
Erik Arazi (Buenos Aires, 1990) studied with the artist Eduardo Navarro. In 2015, he took part in the Cuaderno de apuntes [Notebook] workshop, given by Andrés Di Tella at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; in 2016, in the artists’ programme of Proyecto PAC; and in 2018, he was part of the Artistas x Artistas [Artists for Artists] Programme, at the El Mirador Foundation, where he attended a crit with Tomás Espina and Florencia Rodríguez Giles. In 2019, he was the winner of the Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires for a solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, mentored by Alejandra Aguado, Pablo Siquier and Juliana Iriart. His works have been exhibited at the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Award (2020), the 23rd Klemm Award (2019), the UADE Visual Arts Award (2019 and 2020), the Rafaela Biennial (2019), the National Salon of Visual Arts (2018), the Project A Award (2013 and 2017), the Tucumán National Salon of Visual Arts (2017) and others.
Dana Ferrari at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The characters that make up the group of “Los mareados” are disconnected bodies filled with a variety of mostly soft waste materials that can be used as cushions to lean on. Although the despairing faces and worn-out bodies appear to be a grotesque mirror of the fear and uncertainty of contemporary life, their function is to stimulate a caring bond. That was how they were used during a large portion of 2020, during which Ferrari offered them up for adoption by different guardians. As companion objects, the artist says that their shapes encourage ‘rest from verticality and stillness’. Additionally, the adoption dynamic in which these artworks circulate and the construction of a catalogue of personal experiences that the guardians construct during their relationship together keeps them separate from the logic of the commerce in artistic objects.
Dana Ferrari (Buenos Aires, 1988) studied Stage Design at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes and Characterisation at the Colón Theatre Advanced Institute of Art, while attending stage design workshops. Since 2012, she has taken part in crits and received scholarships from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes/Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti, the Film Laboratory and the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Since 2016, she has been attending the workshop of the artist Diana Aisenberg. Her main exhibitions were: Diana, at the Isla Flotante gallery (2013), El divismo y lo divino [Divaism and the Divine] (Naranja Verde, 2014; Munar Arte, 2018), both performance/installations, and the show La época de los perros flacos [The Age of the Scrawny Dogs], at the Quimera gallery (2018). She is currently a member of the La Baranda group and has, since 2014, been developing the RICAS Studio, a commercial project and art collective, with Clara Campagnola, which is dedicated to artistic ambiances and scenographic productions.
Francisco Vázquez Murillo at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Working like an archaeologist, Francisco Vázquez Murillo has gathered a series of eroded iron bars and rubble on the Costanera Sur in the City of Buenos Aires. An offshoot from his 2020 project Cruzar el río [Crossing the River] ‒ an installation composed of similar pieces but on a larger scale that when laid out in a coastal setting look similar to Menhirs – the pieces in Erosión reflect on what the artist calls ‘a minimal archetypal, constructive gesture… verticality as a space one inhabits and where culture is created as well as our ongoing intention to construct meaning through their similarity with the letters of the alphabet. As an expression of the weight and fixedness of the act of habitation but inspired by the artist’s wanderings though his local environment in search of subtle forms, his works invite us to think about the consequences of our ways of life, focusing on the dialectics and coming together of stillness and exploration, between a sedentary and nomadic way of life.
Francisco Vázquez Murillo (Santa Fe, 1980) has studied Philosophy at the National University of Rosario. He received the Creation scholarship in 2019 for the exhibition Los movimientos alrededor del sol [Movements Around the Sun]. In 2016, he was part of the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and, in 2015, received the Fondo nacional de las Artes (FNA) – Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti scholarship. He has attended workshops and crits with Diana Aisenberg, Silvia Gurfein, Mónica Giron, Santiago Villanueva, Graciela Speranza, Leticia Obeid, Diego Bianchi, Santiago García Navarro and others. He has undertaken projects and research in the following residencies: Kaus Australis (Rotterdam, Netherlands), RSDNART – Kankabal (Yucatán, Mexico), Nido Errante (El Chaltén, Argentina), Marble House Project (Vermont, United States), Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency (Shanghai, China) and Monson Arts (Maine, United States). He has staged solo exhibitions in Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands, China and the United States.
Florencia Vallejos at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
In the work of Florencia Vallejos, personal technology – which has become a kind of private archive – takes on a life of its own and reveals its emotional side. Mis documentos presents a computer desktop in which files open automatically, subtly revealing the presence of subjectivity. Made by the artist at night as a means of calming her daytime anxiety, the video creates a written dialogue about the overhead image of a desert backdrop. These elements are accompanied by the hypnotic movement of an organic shape that is both soft and mechanical, and a soothing melody. The artwork thus exposes the tension between a landscape that offers the opportunity to take a break from the heady stimuli of the screens and the automatic appearance of a sequence of symbols and forms that introduce an unsettling uncertainty over whether the images and digital files are being controlled by a human or a machine.
Florencia Vallejos (Buenos Aires, 1993) A graduate in Audio-Visual Arts from the Universidad Nacional de las Artes, is co-founder of the CORAL collective and La Baranda gallery. In 2018, she was selected on the artist programme of the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (CIA), run by Roberto Jacoby. She has exhibited her video pieces at different festivals in Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Uruguay, the United States and Canada. In 2019, she received First Prize at the Patio de Salvataje Festival, at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, and in 2021, a second honourable mention at Bunge y Born’s call for entries entitled Nuevas Normalidades [New Normalities]. In her group projects, she received the award for Best Short Documentary at Fiver Dance, Spain, and Second Prize at the LAB International Videodance Festival for her short film Territorios [Territories].
María Guerrieri at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
In the artworks of María Guerrieri, multiple rectangles – made from simple but precise strokes of brick-coloured gouache – become basic units of construction very different from traditional rigid, stable, architectural forms that come together to construct shapes dominated by a liberating, fantastical force on the paper plane. In their numerous configurations, the rectangles form upright walking bodies or organisms that contract and expand depending on how the dimensions and shape of the surface on which they are painted inspires them. Made with no prior plan but rather built brick by brick like a kind of mantra, for Guerrieri, these drawings are a means of ‘removing the weight of the eternal and predictable that comes with all familiar things.’ While her images blur the boundary between representations of people and things, as well as people and houses, they also allow for the conception of living bodies full of creativity and impetus that offer a refuge where the imagination can roam free.
María Guerrieri (Buenos Aires, 1973) studied painting and print-making at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. She was selected to participate in the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2012). She received the Bicentennial Creation scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (FNA) (2016). Since 2000, she has staged several solo and group exhibitions in spaces run by artists, galleries and institutions in Argentina and abroad. These include the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), the Centro Cultural Recoleta, the Telefónica Foundation, the FNA, Diverse Works, the Espacio Duplus, Belleza y Felicidad, Appetite, Braga Menéndez, Ruby, Mite, the SlyZmud gallery, the River Paraná Editorial Club, El Bucle and Selvanegra. In 2016, she released Fuente de chocolate [Chocolate Fountain], a book of poems, stories and drawings published by Iván Rosado. She has contributed to publications on art in magazines like Segunda época and El suelo.
Gonzalo Beccar Varela at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The set of paintings made by Gonzalo Beccar Varela redevelops the historical relationship that painting has always maintained with the gaze as an experience of distance. Countering this tradition, each of the pieces aims more to reach out to the viewer’s body than to simply be a surface to be viewed, although it retains that dimension. It also presents a relationship with the senses very different from the conventional experience offered by painting. By including sound and touch as dimensions that establish new rituals around the artwork, the paintings offer the opportunity to glimpse the artist’s body as the real and symbolic territory where the works were made. A prayer, ring, whisper or the squinted gaze make it possible to see the paintings as an object more for devotion than contemplation.
Gonzalo Beccar Varela (Buenos Aires, 1983) between 2001 and 2009, studied Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism within the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes. In 2007, he participated in workshops at The Art Student League, New York, and was a student at the Guillermo Roux Foundation between 2003 and 2006. In 2014, he attended the workshops led by Karina Peisajovich and Matías Duville, at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Also in 2014, he attended the crits ‘Cazadores de arte’ [‘Art Hunters’], run by Alejandra Roux, Fabiana Barreda and Sergio Bazán, and between 2015 and 2016, ‘Cosmos’, a workshop run by Daniel Joglar and Bruno Gruppalli. In 2017, he won a scholarship for the Yungas Project, Tigre edition, directed by Raúl Flores and, in 2020, he participated in the workshop ‘El texto de la obra’ [‘The Text of the Work’], directed by Silvia Gurfein. In 2018, he had his first solo show, Es otra cosa [It’s Something Else], at the Acéfala Gallery in Buenos Aires. He has been general coordinator of the María Casado Home Gallery since 2015.
Lucrecia Lionti at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
In her artwork Calendario abstracto, Lucrecia Lionti explores the lengthening of time that occurred during the pandemic through a system of personal symbols. Discarding the conventional references of empty months and days, the calendar grid is filled with scores of vertical and diagonal lines lovingly sewn by the artist. With a nod to minimalist and conceptual traditions, order and repetition of information and pure, modular forms take on a phenomenological, existential dimension. Lionti injects feeling into the piece through the use of sewing, a constructive language learned in a feminine family environment that requires strength and patient bodily effort. It thus establishes the rhythms of life as a natural means of establishing the dimensions of the artwork.
Employing the same strategy, she has built another series of works that adopt familiar forms from the history of modern abstract art. These homages to artists such as Joseph Albers and Lucio Fontana, which combine Lionti’s love of the pictorial tradition with her need for the construction process to be governed by the fabrication methods and the tecniques to produce images learned outside of artistic institutions, but which she has made her own.
Lucrecia Lionti (Tucumán, 1985) a graduate in Fine Arts from the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, went on to study on the Artists’ Programme with the YPF Scholarship (2010) and at the Film Laboratory of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2012). She was awarded the cheLA Residency (2019), the Argentinian government’s BEC.AR Residency at the Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Uruguay (2019), the Nacional de las Artes Creation scholarship (2018), the El Ranchito/Matadero Residency, Madrid (2017), the scholarship granted by the Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti, Argentina (2016), and the Alec Oxenford scholarship, Paris (2014). She was awarded the May Salon Stimulus Prize by the Museo Rosa Galisteo (Santa Fe, 2019) and the MUNT First Prize (Tucumán, 2018). She has exhibited in several cities around Argentina, as well as in Montevideo, São Paulo, Paris, Madrid and international venues. Her work features in such public and private collections as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, in Madrid, and Le 19 CRAC Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain de Montbéliard, in France.
Daniela Rodi at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The set of soft signage made by Daniela Rodi feature phrases that she rewrites and squeezes until they break open. She thus gives language the opportunity to go on forever, to generously expand their capacity of speech and interpretation. The artworks arise, in the artist’s words, ‘out of a process that begins with listening.’ Messages uttered out loud, other people’s words in writing, recorded or underlined in found or shared texts, are recycled and introduced to new mediums and contexts in which the goal is to emphasize alternative meanings so they end up speaking in different ways again and again. From humble banners, the phrases conjure images that seek to transcend themselves to build an ecosystem of new ideas that, Rodi says, ‘don’t come from me but are attracted by these hanging, flapping phrases.’
Daniela Rodi (La Pampa, 1980) studied Museology at the Municipal School of Fine Arts in General Pico and Art at the Provincial Institute for Fine Arts in Santa Rosa, both located in La Pampa Province. She has received scholarships and awards from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and the Williams Foundation for crits, residencies and training programmes with such artists as Jorge González Perrín, Claudia del Río, Gabriel Valansi, Lucas Di Pascuale and Soledad Sánchez Goldar. She has received grants from institutions such as the Instituto Nacional del Teatro and the TyPA Foundation to study dramaturgy of space and museum management. She founded and co-directed the contemporary art gallery Vermú (2015-2017) in Santa Rosa, La Pampa Province. She held positions in the areas of museology and education at the Casa Museo Olga Orozco (2004-2015), which she directed between 2016 and 2020, and where she developed projects such as ‘The Travelling House Programme’, awarded a prize by Ibermuseos in 2018. In 2020, she founded and co-directed the publishing house La Ballesta Magnífica. She has been working independently on cultural management projects since 2009.
Federico Roldán Vukonich at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
This set of artworks made in 2020 focuses on a specific moment when lockdown limited the availability of materials and thus encouraged the use of simple supplies and small formats. In an attempt to conjure the power of eternal symbols, the artist conceives these pieces as a means of transferring abstract ideas about love to symbols made from pasta stuck to paper, which turns out to be a surface as resilient and noble as stone. The spirals, letters and marks, traced in symmetrical order, establish a code for an encounter within the private, emotional and territorial space from which the artist produces.
Federico Roldán Vukonich (Entre Ríos, 1993) is a graduate in Visual Arts from the Universidad Nacional de las Artes, during 2018, participated in the Artistas x Artistas [Artists by Artists] Programme, organised by the El Mirador Foundation, where he attended crits with Florencia Rodríguez Giles, Tomás Espina and Pablo Siquier. In 2019, he won Second Sculpture Prize at the Entre Ríos Provincial Salon. He has participated in several awards, including: Entre Ríos Provincial Salon (2018-2012), Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires (2017), the Project A Prize (2017), the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales Palais de Glace (2016), the Bienal de Arte Joven de Santa Fe (2014-2016). During 2018, he attended the residency at the Museo Ernesto de la Cárcova in Buenos Aires and, in 2019, in Comunitaria, an international residency for contemporary art and social processes in Lincoln, Buenos Aires. His solo projects include: Pobre duende [Poor Elf], at the Quimera gallery (2019); Teorías de la comunicación [Theories of Communication], at the Museo de la Cárcova (2018); ¿Qué es el arte? [What is Art?], at the El Mirador Foundation (2018); and De mis lágrimas brotará un río [From My Tears Shall Spring a River], at the Usina del Arte (2017).
Benjamín Felice at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The images featured in the works of Benjamín Felice are inspired by diagrams from scientific publications of hypergeometry and terrestrial magnetic fields, which he then alters, tidies, deforms and combines with personal symbols and gestures to lend the pieces a hermetic quality. Hyperboloids, cones, and perspectives of geometric bodies appear from out of an artistic exercise in which they are carved with intensity from a paraffin surface: a process that combines the psychological gesture with modes of mathematical representation charged with the experimental and esoteric energy of physical phenomena. Reminiscent of ancient manuscripts, Felice’s artworks explore the magical nature of images that in this case appear slowly following the initial act of engraving and only become clear when dust and earth are thrown over the surface and fall into the grooves made by the artist in the almost transparent material.
Benjamín Felice (Tucumán, 1990) is a technician in Photography Direction, holds a degree in Cinematography from the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT). He also studied programming for artists at the Telefónica Foundation. He participated in the project ‘Artistic Practices and Digital Cultures, Convergent Technologies and Divergent Content in the Electronic Arts’, at the UNT’s Research Centre, and in ‘Boca de fuego’ [‘Mouth of Fire’], at Munar Arte, coordinated by Carlos Herrera. As a music producer and independent musician, he participates in the labels ABYSS (Buenos Aires) and Memory Number 36 (California). In 2016, he received the Bicentennial scholarship from Argentina’s Fondo Nacional de las Artes and, in 2017, was part of the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. He has taken part in crits with Verónica Gómez, Eduardo Stupía, Eduardo Basualdo, Lux Linder and Rafael Cippolini. He has had solo and group exhibitions at the Miranda Bosch gallery, the Virla cultural centre, the Piedras gallery, Panal, El Rancho Relámpago, the Casa del Bicentenario, Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires and the Espacio La Sala. He was part of the ‘La ira de Dios’ [‘The Wrath of God’] residency. He has collaborated with the group ‘La Onion’ and with ‘Proyecto Tetra’ for Plataforma Futuro. He currently directs the Ohno gallery.
Nina Kovensky at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
In the work of Nina Kovensky, technology operates as a magical device capable of projecting our humanity and emotions and establishing a connection free of the filters and falsities of others. She achieves this through the creation of new functions for communication devices. The abstract appearance of Pulmón de manzana, which consists of a collection of rectangular mirrors, reproduces a typical night-time view from a city building. Intimate spaces both nearby and remote are linked together as a map of symbols through ‘coordinated lighting’, which the artist says ‘evoke a shared synchronicity between every window/screen of the present.’ Each mirror, like an intimate capsule, contains a series of tiny etched synthetic images ranging from a cellular organism to fruit or a constellation. These images create an imaginative world of parallel private realities with multiple times and spaces. Along with these images, the photographs grouped together under the title ‘Selfins’ form part of a continuously growing series of portraits of the artist’s friends and family. The faces are projected and transformed like a light signal when they are reflected in small round mirrors held by each person, as though they were trying to protect their identity.
Nina Kovensky (Buenos Aires, 1993) studied on a Proyectarte scholarship directed by Eva Grinstein (2011) as part of the Artists’ Programme óf the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2017), and at the crits given by Aníbal Buede (2016). She presented her first solo show, Mi primer trabajo, mi primera muestra [My First Work, My First Show], at the Isla Flotante gallery, Buenos Aires (2011), where she also held the exhibition Klapaucius:;::;:; (2014), curated by 141 people. In 2016, she staged the exhibition Equilibrio inestable [Unstable Equilibrium] with the artist Martín Kovensky, her father; in 2018, Realidad disminuida [Diminished Reality] and, in 2020, Ojo de cabra [Goat’s Eye], both at the El Gran Vidrio gallery, Córdoba. In 2017, she was awarded a grant from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Argentina, to film the documentary Que aparezca Maresca [Let Maresca Appear], with the aid of Mic Ritacco.
Lucía Reissig y Bernardo Zabalaga at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Interested in learning how to protect oneself from the invisible – the things one doesn’t see in everyday life but that generate specific emotional terrain and shape the ways in which we inhabit a space – Lucía Reissig and Bernardo Zabalaga seek out ways to offer comprehensive cleaning services for surfaces and energy. Their intervention processes combine methods they have developed throughout their careers as artists, their experience in other fields and their research into the traditional ceremonial practices of different cultures. Seeking to enhance the wellbeing of the artworks in communion with the exhibition space and the participating artists, they put into practice an artwork that consists of a series of rituals carried out before the exhibition opening that, Reissig and Zabalaga say, ‘examine the collective body and connect us with the territory of the gallery that we inhabit with our work.’ One of the witness-elements for this work was a protective talisman that they placed inside the gallery.
The collaboration between the artists Lucía Reissig and Bernardo Zabalaga began in 2018. As a result of asking themselves how to combine their individual practices, Lucía cleaned houses and Bernardo scented them with incense; so they began to perform a variety of actions in order to offer an integral service combining domestic cleaning with energy cleansing.
Lucía Reissig (Buenos Aires, 1994) studied Art at the University of the Arts and, in 2017, was part of the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. In 2018, she won the Young Scholarship Prize of the Kenneth Kemble Visual Arts Award. Her solo exhibitions include Fight or Fly, at the Ray Gallery, Brooklyn (2016), and El trabajo invisible [Invisible Work], at the Selvanegra gallery, Buenos Aires (2018). She has also taken part in such collective exhibitions as Extraña posesión, lugar a dudas [Strange Possession, Room for Doubt], Colombia (2018), Negra [Black], at Munar Arte (2019) and Bombastik, at the Nora Fisch gallery (2021). Bernardo Zabalaga is a Social Communication graduate from the UCB, Bolivia, and holds an Acting degree from the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. He as a Master’s in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. In 2017, he was part of the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. In 2014, he participated in the URRA residency in Buenos Aires, and in Kiosko, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. His first solo exhibition was held at the Manzana Uno gallery, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 2016.
Denise Groesman at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
El beneno de la belleza is a sculpture that is a ‘rocket / tree / sound shower / crazy rattle / shed / oven / incense burner… a spatial cabinet, a place in which to stay and make wishes, somewhere to burn bay leaves,’ that can be both threatening and playful. This is Denise Groesman’s description of a tin structure made from discarded tomato cans that, modified by the artist – who cleans, solders, hammers, softens and polishes them – create a malleable, reusable structure for a gleaming, musical, habitable space. The title – taken from a poem by the Brazilian poet Douglas Diegues who is recognized for his use of an exuberant language arising out of a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish and Guaraní – expresses the idea of fusion in the artwork whose shape makes it a multiple symbol, both dystopian and uplifting.
Denise Groesman (Buenos Aires, 1989) studied the Visual Arts degree at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes. She trained at Gabriel Baggio’s drawing, painting and crits workshop. In 2013, she received a grant to attend the Artists’ Programme of the Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti and, in 2016, she participated in the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT). In 2015, she attended the Cuaderno de apuntes [Notebook] workshop, given by Andrés Di Tella at the UTDT, and in 2016, collaborated with Agustina Muñoz at Das Arts – Amsterdam for the work Las piedras [Stones]. In 2018, she participated in the URRA residency in Tigre, Buenos Aires. In 2019, she was a fellow of the Action Lab at the Teatro San Martín, Buenos Aires. As resident artist, she took part in the Belluard Bollwerk international theatre festival (Fribourg, Switzerland) and in Providenza Lab (art and permaculture) on the island of Corsica (France). She has participated in several group exhibitions and art fairs in Argentina, Chile and the United States, including: Una historia de la imaginación en la Argentina [A History of the Imagination in Argentina], at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2019) and Mostro, at La Fábrica (2017).
Matías Tomás at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The work of Matías Tomás is born out of an irrepressible graphic drive. Loose and impulsive, his ferrite strokes explore the expressive potential of the line and he uses them to construct an almost monochrome artistic universe. This space includes extraordinarily vital abstract figures as well as images of bodies that range from caricature to existential melancholy. The large format work included in this exhibition was made during a period of intense communion with the artist’s natural surroundings in Tafí Viejo, Tucumán, where he lives, with said landscape taking on a more important role in his work. Made at speed and in fragments, the artwork is composed of lines that were put down on paper after long walks through the Tucumán rainforest. It is thus infused with both exterior and interior life, reflecting the connection between the body and its environment.
Matías Tomás graduated from the Maestro Atilio Terragni School of Fine, Decorative and Industrial Arts of the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. From the outset, he specialised in engraving and graphic arts. He assisted María Rossini in her private workshop and has given courses in printed art and cyanotype. He was part of the ‘El Rancho’ art gallery, which featured in arteBA 2013. He has exhibited in group shows, including: La cueva en la roca [The Cave in the Rock] (2015), thanks to a scolarship granted by the Fondo Nacinal de las Artes and, in 2017, staged a solo show at the Big Sur gallery. In 2016, he received a scholarship from the Programme for Artists of the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (CIA).
Juan Gugger at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
With the purpose of questioning what he calls the ‘performance of living’, in the set of videos entitled 2020-2021, Juan Gugger juxtaposes images that document an almost absolute stoppage with natural sounds and ambient noise. Many of them refer to the demands of technology and the expectation of movement, information and production in contemporary life. Obsessed with the passivity of stones and the study of trovants – the only rocks that grow and reproduce discovered in Costesti, Romania, which are considered ‘forms of inorganic life’ – he presents the contemplation of these moments as a means of penetrating stillness. Distorting the primary characteristic of videos – the moving image – the shots appear to be still and to have been tampered with apparent faults or editing errors. These strategies allow the work to invoke the totemic power of natural forms – even where some aren’t – as the first monuments: memorials, sculptures or even architecture.
Juan Gugger (Córdoba, 1986) studied at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas and the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. His work has been exhibited in such institutions and spaces as the Espace Voltaire (Paris, 2021), Plateforme (Paris, 2021), the Koganecho Art Center (Yokohama, 2020), the Fiminco Foundation (Romainville, 2020), the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, 2019), the Monet Museum Gardens (Giverny, 2019), the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires (MACBA) (Buenos Aires, 2019), the Centro Cultural Kirchner (Buenos Aires, 2019), the NN gallery (La Plata, 2018), Sala de Proyectos (La Candelaria, 2017), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (Rosario, 2016), Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires (2015) and the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Contemporary Art (2014). His recent awards and distinctions include the Terra Foundation Fellowship (Chicago, 2019), the 69th edition of Jeune Création (Paris, 2019), the Láureat Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, 2019), the Kenneth Kemble Award (Buenos Aires, 2017), Roberts grant (Bogotá, 2017), a Creation grant from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2016), Project to Develop Award from the 4th Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires (2015) and an Oxenford scholarship (Buenos Aires, 2014).
Carolina Fusilier at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
In the artworks from the series “Ucronías de habitaciones totémicas”, silhouettes of small archaeological figures contain landscapes and architectures. Solid figures are thus opened up for reimagination as containers of other universes and constructions: they become transparent so as to reveal new places and thus become bigger than themselves even as they remain within their outlines. The artworks are made from a combination of images cut out of pages from archaeology journals – we are left with only the main motif, its silhouette and its shadow – and watercolours that complete and adapt to these ghostly bodies, which have faded entirely. Interested in the symbolic and formal potential of the constructive fragment, with this series the artist continues her exploration of cultures that conceive of their homes as bodies or extensions of themselves and especially ‘talking architectures’; a kind of utopian architecture developed during the neoclassical French period in which the form of each construction would intentionally reveal its function.
Carolina Fusilier (Buenos Aires, 1986) graduated from the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires in 2011, completed the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella’s between 2016 and 2017. She participated in Soma in Mexico City and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2018 and 2019. She received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Scholarship (2019–2020) and the support grant from Jumex Foundation in Mexico City to carry out her project Kitchen with a View (2019). She was also awarded the Raúl Urtasun – Frances Harley scholarship for emerging artists from Argentina (Banff Center, Canada, 2015). She completed the Open Sessions programme at The Drawing Center, New York, in 2018-2019. Her solo exhibitions include: Kitchen with a View, at Locust Projects, Miami (2019); Angel Engines, at the Natalia Hug Gallery, Cologne (2018); and Fenómeno [Phenomenon], at La Fábrica, Buenos Aires (2014). Her work was recently included in group exhibitions at: Sculpture Center and The Drawing Center (New York), the Kamias Triennial (Philippines, 2020), Doc! (Paris, 2019), the Chalton Gallery (London), Soma (Mexico) and The Banff Center (Alberta), among others.
Jimena Croceri at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The artwork Trapo sonajero by Jimena Croceri adds a new dimension to a set of used domestic rags: the artist has sewn bells to them so as to produce sound. Her work is aimed at making audible the objects and actions of our everyday life to highlight their essential role in maintaining our environment as well as in creating modes of communication of which we are not aware. When animated, these objects are capable of giving rise to new experiences for the viewer and revealing a network of emotional, vital and sound-based connections between them, our bodies, the air and the water. Their activation also reveals the unique character of each and every encounter: in the case of the elements in Trapo sonajero, the sound that arises from their movement is determined by the specific rhythm of the orange lines one often sees in cleaning cloths – the gleaming line of bells which appear as though set out in a musical score – the dimension and quality of the cloth, the spaces between the stitching and, most of all, the force with which one shakes them, or the wind.
Jimena Croceri (Neuquén, 1981) graduated from the Universidad Nacional de las Artes and continued her training on the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2013) and at the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (2014). Among other recognitions, she received the Oxenford Travel Scholarship for field research in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest (2016), was selected to participate as artist-in-residence on the FLORA ars+natura programme in Colombia (2018), participated in the Pro Helvetia exchange programme ‘Coincidencia’ in Switzerland (2019) and received the Pernod Ricard research scholarship from Villa Vassilieff in France (2020). Her work has featured in exhibitions at the Raven Row Exhibition Centre, London (2019), the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (2019), the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2014 and 2019) and for the Braque Prize, Muntref, Buenos Aires (2015).
Gala Berger at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Made during the artist’s long stay in Costa Rica and inspired by the technique of quilting, the works in the series “No tengo fuerzas para rendirme” explore new organizational structures through images that represent fetishes, desires and a new model for humanity forged by the manipulation of digital animation and 3D rendering as well as hybrids with animals and micro-organisms. Given the titles of different governmental departments, each artwork brings a new set of associations and sensibilities to the political imagination: from the warmth and decorative nature of popular traditional sewing techniques to what the artist describes as ‘cyborg, spectral, transcorporeal, transmaterial and, above all fragmentary’ qualities. Through them, she seeks to criticize the hetero-patriarchal order and stimulate processes that reimagine our culture and institutions.
Gala Berger (Buenos Aires, 1983) graduate in Visual Arts from the Universidad Nacional de las Artes, in 2011, received a scholarship from the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas. She was awarded scholarships by the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and the Laboratory for Research in Contemporary Artistic Practices (LiPac-UBA). In 2020, she was selected as for a residency at the Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark, and took part in the Para Site 2020 Workshops in Hong Kong. In 2019, she was an integral part of RAW Academy #6, mentored by Koyo Kouoh in Dakar, Senegal, and was co-founder of the Nuevo Museo Energía de Arte Contemporáneo (2010–2020), and of the spaces Inmigrante (2012–2014) and Urgente (2014). Her work has been exhibited individually and collectively in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Argentina, Sweden, Peru, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, South Korea, Germany, Chile, Ecuador, United States, Puerto Rico, United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions in Argentina, Sweden, Mexico, South Korea and Costa Rica.
Ana Won at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Ana Won’s paintings accumulate layer upon layer of different methods and materials whose combination – through compatibility or otherwise – takes the images to unexpected places. Considered by the artist as a ritual act by which ‘human action can connect with the other,’ her painting generates canvases strewn with anxious writing that, permanent and alive, spreads across the surface like a magnetic field. The brushstrokes and lines, which hurry the appearance of basic forms and outlines – from crossings out and blotches to polygons – are, the artist says ‘a record of the passage of a force through the canvas via the materials.’ This is expressed in her rhythmic use of colour and the way in which the shapes take their form on the surface and find ways to relate with one another, configuring diagrams riven through with intense graphic energy.
Ana Won (Tucumán, 1989) studied Artistic and Technical Photography at the National University of Tucumán. In 2018, she attended the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She participated in workshops at Yungas Contemporary Art and the Rusia gallery. She has taken crits with Carlos Huffman, Diego Bianchi, Mónica Giron, Verónica Gómez, Eduardo Stupía, Eduardo Basualdo, Raúl Flores, Sandro Pereira and others. She was awarded a grant by the Proyecto Impulsar Cultura in 2020 and by the URRA residency scholarship in 2019. She received distinctions in the UNNE Award for Visual Arts and in the XLIV Salón Nacional de Tucumán. She has held solo exhibitions like Cantos y alaridos [Songs and Howls], at the Constitución gallery, Buenos Aires (2021); Episodios de la pintura [Painting Episodes], at Lateral, Tucumán (2017) and G3NER∆C1ON 1000ЁNNI4Г, at the Espacio Tucumán, Buenos Aires (2017). She has also taken part in group exhibitions, including: Mannequin, at Tucumán Foundation for Contemporary Art (FACT); Tucumán (2019); Faltas personales [Personal Failings], at the Exhibition Hall of the Universidad Torcuato di Tella (2019); Cover, at the Tres Pinos Foundation (2018) and Tucumán Abstract Art, at the Espacio Cripta (2017). She is a co-founder of the FACT.
Florencia Caiazza at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Florencia Caiazza’s installation is composed of a set of plaster casts made during research into the production of ornamental motifs in ceramics. Contact with the clay, used in this case as a mould, led little by little to the artist discarding the construction of forms that generate motifs through reproduction and repetition in favour of making a surface that, although it may continue to use a fragment as a construction module, is the result of the exploration of touch as a unique and unrepeatable gesture. Without using any tools, the artist works solely with the pressure of her fingers – and occasionally those of her daughter – in an exercise of discovery and exploration of materials that highlights her movement, strength, rhythm and composition.
Florencia Caiazza (Buenos Aires, 1982) studied at the Regina Pacis Advanced School of Arts in San Isidro, and at the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2015). She has won the Kenneth Kemble Youth Scholarship Award (2017), First Prize in CALL XVIII, from the Luis Adelantado gallery in Valencia (2016), Second Prize in the Williams Foundation Competition (2015) and a Mention in the Rosario National Salon (2014). She was selected for the Federal Laboratory of the Museo Sívori (2021) and has participated in the Creative Ireland Program (2019), Espositivo (Madrid, 2018), the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de La Coruña (Galicia, 2016), Achterhaus Ateliers (Hamburg 2016) and the Argentinian-German project ‘Villa Panadería Dorada’ [Golden Bakery Shantytown], (Düsseldorf, 2016). She has held the solo exhibitions Mismatch, at the Pallas Projects Gallery, Dublin (2021), Color municipal [Municipal Colour], at the Hilo gallery, Buenos Aires (2019), ¿Cómo se conocieron? [How Did You Meet?], at the Luis Adelantado gallery (2017), and El circuito de las formas [The Circuit of Forms], at the Big Sur gallery, Buenos Aires (2016). In addition, her works have been displayed in group exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba, A Coruña, Dresden, Rio de Janeiro and other cities.
Santiago Villanueva at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The artworks from the “Mesas revueltas y collages” series by Santiago Villanueva, were made between the months of May and August 2020 using the contents of ‘a series of boxes containing objects and papers that I didn’t know where to put, a kind of archive limbo’. Scattering these objects across small paintings of organic shapes that in some cases resemble landscapes, Villanueva builds collages that celebrate the crossovers between his personal history and the history of art, whose fabrication methods are made clear by the links defined by curiosity, sensibility, time shared with others and emotion. The elements spread over the canvas include fliers, collated texts and blisters of pills, locks, mate gourds and incense that lend a more ceremonial element to a collection of mementos that have been transformed into relics. Set out so that they appear to have been thrown across the surface, they present a delicate snapshot of the coincidences that mould the day to day emotional, intellectual and professional development of an artist.
Santiago Villanueva (Buenos Aires, 1990) is an artist and a curator, was in charge of the extended area of influence of the Nuevo Museo Energía de Arte Contemporáneo in Buenos Aires from 2011 until 2018 and was curator of the Bellos Jueves [Beautiful Tuesdays] cycle at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires from 2014 until 2015. From 2016 to 2017, he was pedagogical curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. During 2012, he was curator of Public Programmes and Education at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA). With Fernanda Laguna and Rosario Zorraquín, he coordinated the ‘2019 Spazio de arte’. His publications include: El surrealismo rosa de hoy [Today’s Pink Surrealism] (Iván Rosado), Las relaciones mentales. Eduardo Costa [Mental Relations: Eduardo Costa] (Museo Tamayo), Juan Del Prete. Pintura Montada Primicia [Novelty Mounted Painting] (Roldan Moderno) and Mariette Lydis (Iván Rosado). He was co-curator of the exhibition “Traidores los días que huyeron” [‘Traitors the Days That Fled’], by the artist Roberto Jacoby, at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario. He formed part of the editorial group of the Mancilla journal and is currently editor of the Segunda época magazine. He teaches Curatorial Studies at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes.
Agustina Wetzel at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
Vida salvaje is part of a series of videos in which Agustina Wetzel seeks to raise awareness about the effects of gentrification. In this case, a compilation of recordings of demolitions played in reverse depicts a succession of large buildings rising from out of a cloud of dust one by one. Through the use of digital and VHS archive footage – relics from the history of the moving image – her work highlights how casually our society creates its own ruins. Ferocious and nostalgic, Vida salvaje also leaves open the question of how these processes of gentrification affect the fabric of communities, which are invisible at the scale of these buildings.
Agustina Wetzel is a CONICET doctoral fellow in Gender Studies and Latin American Contemporary Art at the Centre for the Study and Documentation of the Image, Geohistorical Research Institute, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, where she researches intersections between art and monstrosity. Based on her researches, she has given seminars at Asociación de Estudios Latinoamericanos (LASA)/Barcelona, the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, Universitat de Vic –Universitat de Catalunya (UVic–UCC) and others. In 2019, she participated in the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT) and, in 2020, in its Film Programme. Her videos have been selected for different national awards and festivals: Fuera del área de cobertura/Outside the Coverage Area, at Visions du Réel (Switzerland, 2021); Estados del deseo [States of Desire], at the Federal Laboratory of the Dirección General de Patrimonio, Museos y Casco Histórico (Argentina, 2021); Mundos propios [Own Worlds], at the Exhibition Hall of the UTDT (2021); Amiga BBS [BBS Girlfriend], at the 24th Klemm Award (Argentina, 2020); Satellite Heritage, at Panorama together with the Garra gallery (2020); Ruina vertical [Vertical Ruin], at the Félix Amador Salon (Argentina, 2019); and El idioma de los modos [The Language of the Modes], at the National Award for the Visual Arts by Universidad Nacional del Noreste (Argentina, 2019) and the Little Biennial at the Ruth Benzacar gallery (2019).
Nacha Canvas at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The artworks of Nacha Canvas arise out of her experimentation with clay: a material that is constantly shifting states between dust, damp, soft paste and dry, rigid objects. As a raw material, clay represents different temporal dimensions: it is an element that is thousands of years old but also projects infinitely into the future and always has the quality of potentially becoming or producing unexpected shapes. The artist explores this cycle of transformations and states in her models, a process in which faults or slight deformations arise out of minor mutations that perpetuate the production line of new forms. This process gave rise to the installation she called Congénere, a term that refers to the fact that in spite of their differences they are all different forms with a shared nature. The subtle, gradual transformation undergone by the pieces raises questions about time and the context of their birth and re-identifies them as objects that straddle the boundary between culture and natural organisms.
Nacha Canvas (Tierra del Fuego, 1990) studied Graphic Design at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she taught Morphology. At the same time, she trained in the disciplines of Ceramics, Drawing and Photography. Twice winner of the Bienal de Arte Joven de Buenos Aires in the Visual Arts category, she obtained a training scholarship at the Casa Tres Patios residency in Medellín, Colombia (2013) and a grant to develop the Friso project, curated by Lara Marmor, Marcela Sinclair and Patricio Larrambebere (2017). In 2016, she received an honourable mention in the Itaú Visual Arts Prize and was selected to participate in the Braque Prize, Muntref, in 2019. Her work has been exhibited in several cities around Argentina, as well as Miami, New York, Toronto, Lima, Brussels and Punta del Este.
La Chola Poblete at the exhibition Within There Is But One Abode
The work of La Chola Poblete explores the interrupted transformation of bodies and identities as embodied by mingling, mixture and exchange. Employing performative, sculptural and pictorial languages, the artist develops a system of symbols identified with bodily accessories such as clothing, jewellery, masks and objects. Through a repertory of bodily and ornamental forms seen in a set of bread masks laid out like archaeological pieces, she enacts an ongoing mutation of figures in a search for a forever shifting identity and to renew the symbolic power of ancestral cultures. The process of experimentation and learning undergone by the artist for each of his pieces revolves around bread as a living material; a perishable, primordial element that is moulded to represent a state of change.
La Chola Poblete (Mendoza, 1989) studied for the BA degree and teacher training degree in Visual Arts at the Universidad de Cuyo. She participated in solo and collective exhibitions with artworks that include: Il martirio di Chola (Espacio Cultural Julio Le Parc, 2014), Esercizi del pianto (Primera Bienal de Performance, Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Franklin Rawson, 2015), Rumore (Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno de Mendoza, 2016), American Beauty (Imagen Galería, arteBA 2017); Pierrot (Plataforma Futuro, Centro Cultural Conte Grand, 2017); Pierrot II (Pasaje 17 Galería, 2017), Ejercicios para cargar ausencias [Exercises for Carrying Absences] (A la Cal, Santa Fe, 2018), Muerte de barro [Death of Mud] (Imagen Galería, arteBA 2018), Todos sabemos lo fácil que es hacer llorar a alguien [Everybody Knows How Easy It is to Make Someone Cry] (El Cultural San Martín, 2018); Slave ( Museo Carlos Alonso, Mendoza, 2019), El órgano masculino de la Chola [The Chola’s Male Organ]a (A la Cal, MAC, Córdoba 2019) and Tenedor de hereje [Heretic’s Fork] (Pasto, Buenos Aires, 2021). She participated in the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2018) and in the Artists’ Programme of MARCO Arte Foco, artist-in-residence workshops and the training and experimentation platform lab for transdisciplinary artists, at the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires (2019). She is part of the collective of dissident activists ‘Comparsa Drag’.