Sofía Rossa

“During my participation in the Casa Alberto Heredia Residency Programme, I plan to develop a project focusing on the study of artistic practices that address violence and the diverse representations of this subject from a contemporary perspective. Alberto Heredia’s drawings will provide me with a starting point, and I will take advantage of the works he donated to the museum and its archives. While many of these pieces are critical of forms of repression and power seen in the 20th century, my interest lies in the foundation they provide for an investigation of current representations of violence, as well as for generating connections with other artists in the museum’s collection and with contemporary productions from other regions. This project will take a critical approach and provide an incisive look at the wounds inflicted to the Argentine political body, with the aim of expanding these representations into the present day, marked by new forms of control, silencing and resistance. I would like to move away from a narrative focused exclusively on the dictatorship in order to raise new questions, such as: Which bodies are marked by violence today? Which languages allow it to be expressed or resisted? What marks – symbolic, sensory or tangible – does it leave? While one of my objectives is to open a space for reflecting on historical memory, I would also like to establish an inter-generational dialogue connecting works by artists from different regions of the country, to establish links between different periods, languages, contexts and generations. During the residency, I will make a selection of works and fragments that can be used as the basis for a series of drawings and a publication that takes the format of a fanzine. This small volume will bring together reflections about the images I work with as well as graphic interventions I make in them, understanding that drawing is a tool for thought. The process will also include drawings that will be produced as a means of visualising those things that one cannot always express through written language. These interventions will aim to underscore issues I consider relevant and to open up new readings from a personal perspective. In short, this project is a space for research, production and critical thinking that, through the overlaps between the archives, memory and contemporary practices, looks to activate a sensitive perspective of violence in its many forms. And, through the use of drawing as an expanded practice, I will construct collective meanings that broaden our ways of reading, narrating, and resisting.”