Biography
I was born in the city of Córdoba, in 1973, I´ve lived there ever since. Before entering the UNT´s Arts School I took a degree course in Graphic Design, that ended up being, many times, a sort of working life jacket. In 1999 I took part of a seminar called “Cielo teórico” (given and organized by a group of artist from Córdoba: Cagnolo, Ruiz, Pizarro). I come to think of them now as strong references of my first art work, “Juuuh fooo” (2000). In 2002 I attended Mónica Girón´s atélier in Buenos Aires, thanks to the scholarship for province artists that was awarded by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (FNA), and paralelly participated of the art clinics organized by the Fundación Antorchas in Córdoba. “Dame fuego” (Gimme light) was the first collective exhibition that worked as a closing ceremony for these clinics, by the end of 2003.
Partly because of the country’s economic crisis and my subsequent unemployment, between 2003 and 2005 I devoted myself to the activities of destruction and reconstructuction. I did a series of performances in which I broke dishes, crockery objects, and later on paciently reconstructed them. On the other hand, I daily recorded tapes of local soap-operas, specially those by Adrián Suar, and then re-edited them with my VHS recorder into absurd sequences.
During the winter of 2006, “Los Basiliscos” invited me to their art residency in Avellaneda, experience that I shared with Aurelio Kopaining, Gabo Camnitzer and Ale Fangi. I decided to work like the bride who brings flowers to the loved house, and daily rustle together a mixture of local herbs and weeds, put them in a vase and copy them on black posterboards. This work I called it “El Jardín de Avellaneda” (Avellaneda’s Garden).
On April 2007 we went to Havana, together with Pablo Rosales, invited by the Batiscafo project, for which we worked for two months along with fellow Cuban artists. It was there that I did a documentary film called “Paraísos” (Paradises), in which I asked the Cubans what was a paradise for them.
My daily life goes by between the Drawing I professorship at the UNC, and Management, at the photography course degree of the Escuela Spilimbergo. I also coordinate and organize the Visual Arts area of the CEPIA (Center for the Production and Research in Art), at the UNC’s Arts School.
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.
The themes I was interested in not so long time ago are not the ones that interest me now; however I do find that the “ways” of working and building up an idea remain the same. The work I entitled “Juuhh foooo” was a varied group, in terms of languages and techniques I used (photography, video-installation, objects and drawings) that responded to an intense quest, a necessity to find my own personal way of working. It seemed that at that moment (1999), I built the basements that marked my vices and wise moves from then on. 1. Air, Experience, Closed room, Smoke machine / 1999. A group of people were invited to stay inside a room the longest they could resist, while the air (the medium of the action), began changing to a white smoke. 2. Fiord, Instalation, 40 high-impact objects mounted on a wall / 2000. Built on PVC relief-objects from drawings made on the empty spaces left between the branches of a tree. 3. Photographs, paintings on cutted wooden boxes and drawings. Leticia El Halli Obeid, friend and colleague, wrote an article on an exhibition that helped me understand and foster a strategy of action, and this is what is says: “Carolina has recurrently dealt with the problem of voidness and reconstruction, in a sort of detectivesque and archaeological exercise. Reconstructing from the traces and clues left by the fragments.” I also take into consideration a video from 2002, “TV Collage”. This work was made from TV soap-operas, generally from Argentina, and aired prime time. With the fragments taken from such a material, I organized a new story using the mediums and resources that an average TV viewer (back then) would use: a VHS video-recorder and a remote control. I was interested in working with dilemmas such a fiction and representation within the mass-media, the reception of such products on national TV, the limits between private and public, and copyright laws. Today, I think that such a pretentious mixture worked as a turning point for my production, more than an art work on itself.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
I think it works better if read or divided into groups. Moreover taking into consideration the last three years, when I take a subject and work it around using a trial and error methodology on each work dealing with the same idea.
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?
We’ve had, in Córdoba, a long tradition of intermittent dialogues with references from outside the country, almost through art reproductions in books and catalogues, or comments and descriptions by friends travelling abroad and bringing us those small unvaluable objects. Let’s remember that there was no internet back then. That situation somehow stimulated our imagination and our reception of contemporary art. It’s curious to note that back then, Buenos Aires didn’t have within my generation, the presence that it would eventually have later on. A first reference, very important for my education, during and after the Arts School, is Pablo González Padilla. The references, within Cordoba’s art scene belonged to an older generation than ours, and were Carina Cagnolo, Andrea Ruiz, Anibal Buede and José Pizarro. Somehow, they introduced a breath of fresh air to the art scene, with ways of thinking and producing that were different from what was known back then, and that responded a so-called “international art language”. My references were many, and still are: Paola Sferco, Sofía García Vieyra, Adriana Bustos, Irene Kopelman, Lila Pagola, Laura del Barco, Karina Scala, Christian Román, Marisol San Jorge, Erica Naito, Pablo Género, Lucas Di Pascuale, Juan Der Harabedian, Uschi Gröeppel, Jorgelina Herrero Pons, Axel Strasnoy, Julián D’Angiolillo, Julia Masvernat. Those functioning as close references: Esteban Álvarez, Tamara Stuby, Cristina Schiavi. And the usuals: León Ferrari, Tulio de Sagastizabal, Roberto Jacoby, Gyula Kosice, Víctor Grippo. At a very particular moment, they were filtered references: Gary Hill, Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Ana Mendieta, Sophie Calle, Cindy Sherman, Nuno Ramos.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
1. The dream series by Grete Stern, Recoleta, Buenos Aires, 2003. 2. Annual Revised Report. Audit of a year in my life, in statistics; Tamara Stuby. Contemporáneos, Malba, Buenos Aires, 2004. 3. The super-real. Works 1969-1984. David Lamelas, Malba 2006. I’m interested in the levels of humour and irony in these works.
