Valeria López

CÓRDOBA, CÓRDOBA PROVINCE
TEACHER, VISUAL ARTIST AND INDEPENDENT MANAGER
PROPOSED PROJECT

Conexiones desde la Colección AH [Connections from the AH Collection]

My proposal involves carrying out an investigation and artistic production based on the hundred or so works that belonged to Alberto Heredia’s personal collection.

Firstly, I am interested in researching this collection in order to identify and reveal its distinctive features, and to find out any possible links between Heredia and the artists in his collection. I intend to ask myself whether there is a heterogeneity that this group of works may represent, and at the same time, I will compare them to the Museum’s holdings in order to find out what they can reveal and how the two collections dialogue with each other.

Secondly, I would like to approach the Alberto Heredia house as a domestic space where, surely, works from his collection would have been exhibited. As a result, they would have shared the space with the artist himself. I plan to use its walls, corners and spaces to produce, through artistic languages such as painting and drawing, the possible location of these artworks and to map their connections: a kind of curatorial work that will emerge as I make headway in my research and bring into play intersubjective, temporal, spatial and artistic relationships. In this way, I hope to make staging proposals in which other collected works, images or elements can be added, making use of fragmentation as a way of setting up non-linear narratives and unexpected connections. In a way, I would like to let myself be led by what I find, by what Heredia highlights ⎯ in his works, his archives, his house ⎯ and by the experience itself, the walks, the links and the exchanges.

Unlike archival rationale or the teleological investigation of the sciences, I believe that the power of researching and creating that originates from an artistic practice lies in the fact that it admits the possibility of an exploration that is not necessarily controlled, that can sustain and produce diverse fictions, escape from established rationale and open up endless possibilities for other ways of knowing, thinking and doing, which may encourage the mobilising power of enigmas, discoveries and intuitions or signs.

Valeria López Was born in Cipolletti, in Río Negro Province, Valeria López has been living and working in Córdoba since 2006. She has a degree in Painting and in Contemporary Artistic Production from the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, where she currently works as a teacher and researcher. She has continued her studies in the Artists’ Programme of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2021/2022) and in workshops and clinics with multiple cultural agents.

She has received the following grants from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes: for work completion (2022), Creation (2021), Training (2018) and the ‘Taller de Producción y Pensamiento en Artes Visuales’ (2015).

She has undertaken the ‘Azul Montaña’ residency, in San Miguel de los Ríos, Córdoba (2022); ‘Sala Taller VII’, at the Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay (2019), and ‘La sala que habito’, at the Centro Cultural Cabildo, Córdoba (2018).

Her latest exhibitions include Perpetua, curated by Siu Lizaso, at Bithouse (2023); La poética del desmontaje [The Poetics of Disassembly], at Satélite (2023); Luz sobre los meridianos [Light on the Meridians], at Sala de Artes visuales de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2022); Código de origen [Origin Code], at Sala A, Salta, and at El Garaje, Lima (2021); Borde y contexto [Border and Context], at Satélite (2021); Desplazamientos [Displacements], curated by Lucía Pittaluga, at Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo (2019), and Historia particular [A Particular History], curated by Carla Barbero, at Colección CLM (2019).

Her work has been recognised with the following distinctions: Premio Itaú; Premio en Obra, ArteBA; Fundación Fortabat; Premio Pintura Bancor; Salón de Tucumán; Premio Nacional de Pintura, and Banco Central, among others.

She has been running the Satélite gallery since 2021, together with the artist Pablo Martínez.