Biography
I was born in Santa Rosa City (La Pampa). Two things I remember from childhood: a circus I set up with a friend in henhouses, full of chickens, pigeons and other orphan animals that my father used to bring from the countryside. There we were the trainers and those poor terrorized animals were our audience. Another favorite activity was to read The Treasure of Youth that connected me with other worlds, the Book of Why, in which the incommensurable was measured with recognizable objects, for example the depth of the ocean with the Eiffel Tower, or the pages with illustrations of popular costumes from countries that were wiped off the map after World War 2. All this mitigated the monotony and dryness of the context and allowed me to fly.
I remember my adolescence, always waiting for the postman, who handed me the objects, photographs and letters that he exchanged with people like me, or that he received from artists from Hollywood who dedicated me their pictures, and things from other countries. I spent my whole time filling coupons from magazines to get this things.
I grew up among rags, scissors, couturiers, tailors, embroiderers and weavers. Getting in those drawers and cabinets and pieces of wool... getting in what seemed destined to waste... getting secretly the objects 'this-one-no', keeping them to do something that was always imperfect as craft and always useless to use. I didn’t consider 'art' what I used to do. Making 'art' was being able to draw strict photographic still-lives in school... endless frustrations. I alternated these 'crafts' with theater classes in French and English, films and philosophical readings.
A scholarship at Skidmore College, USA, when I was 18 years old, changed the course of my life. There I managed to expand my world and unite the history of art, to philosophy and linguistics. When I returned, I continued with linguistic, I became a translator, I earned from this work to live and combined it with political militancy in the 60s and 70s, until art reappeared as a vital need. I started my training with the things that were closer: the textile design with Luis Negrotti. My interest in forms in space took me to the workshop of Enio Iommi and to incorporate theoretical training in Contemporary Art and Aesthetics with Jorge López Anaya and Elena Oliveras, respectively. Then I incorporated photography as a support. I owe to the experimental design classes with Pablo Siquier and Viviana Blanco the fact that I reconciled with drawing, and to the art workshops with Jorge Macchi the knowledge of prioritize the economy of means and measures as drivers of my work. I always enjoy sharing time in a workshop, now in the one of painting with Leila Tschopp and Vivi Blanco.
I use different means to carry out my work (textiles, photography, video, objects, installations, interventions in public space, visual poetry, artist books, etc.).
I was given the Grand Prize of the National Salon in 2001 (textiles) and the 1st Prize of the Textile Hall Eduardo Sívori Biennale (2007), Clamor Brzeska Awards of Vórtice Argentina (2003 and 2004), among others.
I exhibit regularly in Argentina (Recoleta Cultural Center, Olivera´s Big House, La Tribu FM, etc.), and I was invited to exhibit in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, USA, France, Iceland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Uruguay. I am interested in art collective groups, in art in its “extra-artistic” forms and any action of artistic self-management.
Vision of art
1. Choose a work that represents you, describe it in relation to its format and materiality, its relation with time and space, its style and theme; detail its production process.
I choose my last work, a video, "Bundles" [Envoltorios], because it is a detachment of a work in process of major magnitude related to the life of Ramón Rojas, Paraguayan, whom I knew when he had already lived 6 years in the street due to the crisis of 2002. The dedication and care that Ramón was putting to protect his belongings from the exposure to weather inside his rolling “house” (cart of supermarket) made me propose him in April, 2008 the work of helping me with the packing of my installation Public Corporation [Sociedad Anónima] to send it to an exhibition. The video shows on divided screen two ways of putting order in the chaos: to the left side Ramón arranging his life outdoors; to the right, the two of us in my workshop packing a work of art.
This work has a materiality and format of video that is not a support that I use with frequency. But it is a collaboration work that links with the usual themes of my works that relate to the individual and social body, to the identity, the violence and the value of diverse spaces such as the house, the bed or the street. The house and the places that protect the intimacy, the dream, the fantasy, the daily routines have been central in my works this last years. I am interested in their objects, corners, spaces that shelter the memory, the intimacy and the forms of the attachment. And very specially those belonging to the persons who live in the streets. Again and again, I work with textiles because it’s related to the body; both suffer changes, are receptive and permeable, register a memory of the time, of the use, of the work, of the wear.
The process of production is diverse because it is defined in each case, so that I do not know it in advance. Often the persons or the objects appear before me with their stories and in the contact and the communication with them, the tool and the format are outlined.
When an idea is the starting point, the point of arrival can be different. In this case the process acted of transformer ("The Corporation", “The Recipe").
Other times, the idea is there before being a work. The work turns out to be a physical model of the process of thought, it has a (visual) language and the title has another language (written). The result is more conceptual. ("Centennial", "Tarnish of the marriage silverware", "One of thirty thousand", etc.).
I am always surprised to discover that works that have different aesthetics and belong to different times can coexist with others thanks to the links that are set between them.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
From where the viewers want and from where their own intuition and emotion direct their look and their thought. And as long as it can be done, I want it to be seen as a whole, like a corpus of work.
3. In reference to your work and your position in the national and international art fields, what tradition do you recognize yourself in? Who are your contemporary referents? What artists of previous generations are of interest to you?
My contemporary referents are Jorge Macchi, Sarah Sze, Cildo Meireles, Mona Hatoum, Ernesto Neto, Cornelia Parker, Gordon Matta Clark, Sophie Calle, besides Antonio Berni, Edward Hopper, Joan Brossa, Helio Oiticica, Louise Bourgeois, Gego...
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
At the risk of letting many important people out, what comes to my mind now are Guillermo Kuitca's exhibition in Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (MALBA) because it allowed us to have a broad look of the painter’s work.
The retrospectives of Liliana Porter and of Roberto Elía, for their poetics and generous presence during the exhibition.
León Ferrari's retrospective for the intense curatorial work that offered us the diverse periods of his work and because it turned to be paradigmatic in the fight against the censorship and the intolerance (all in the Recoleta Cultural Center).
Also I was interested very much in Gathering [Tertulia] in the Recoleta Cemetery, by Eduardo Molinari and N. Varchausky, an interdisciplinary experience of how it is possible to approach history and culture from art.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
There is much and of all the tendencies, but I want to mention the increasing importance of the groups, the diverse forms of self-management, the interdisciplinary work, the science and the technology tied to art. Likewise, a crisis of the traditional representation and the welcome appearance of new forms and new resources to think art.
