Biography
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1958. She currently lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Her work can be ckecked out in the following websites: www.rojas.uba.ar; www.ramona.org.ar; www.proyectov.org; www.arteuna.com; www.Oya-es.net; www.elparchedigital.com; www.latinarte.com; www.terrazared.com; www.proyectotrama.org.ar; Visual Showcase; www.artechacra.com, among others. She is the author of “Histories of Art. Dictionary of certainties and intuitions”, a project that, up to this day, counts with 1,183 registered collaborators and was awarded by TRAMA for its research on art practice and its social awareness projection, and presented at the Goethe Institut. The dictionary is developed in several formats, even written on walls. Experiences such as these were performed at the Museo Castagnino, Rosario, Estudio Abierto, Buenos Aires, Venus Biennial, Tandil, Espacio La Guarda, Salta, Centro Cultural de España, Córdoba, ArteBA, MALBA, Contemporáneo 6 and Parque de la Memoria. As a book, the dictionary was published by Adriana Hidalgo Publishing House. As a video, it was awarded with the 1st prize at the VII Human Rights Film Festival, within the “Short film” category. It was invited to the URBANNERUNGSKUKTUREN Berlin—Buenos Aires International Simposium. Nowadays, the Children’s Dictionary is being added to the project, containing drawings and texts based on different words made by children coming from Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires schools.
She was distinguished by her teaching activity in the year 2000. AACA/AICA Awards: She receives the “J. A. García Martínez” award for the Teaching Activity 2003, by the Argentina Art Critics Association. She is involved with art teaching since 1982, being a prominent figure in the artist training field, as well as in the organization and programming of experimental conferences and workshops for artists, both beginners and professionals.
She is in charge of both the practical and theorical plastic courses at the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas and, since the year 2003, coordinates the Plastic Arts, courses and events Area, as well as the “Rojas fuera del Rojas” Area of the mentioned cultural centre.
She also coordinates art analysis workshops for artists in Buenos Aires, Bahía Blanca, Paraná, Olavarría, Tucumán, Santa Fé, Salta and the North-East of Argentina through the Fundación Antorchas, Universidad de Buenos Aires and independent projects.
Before this activity, she was a professor at the chair of Morphology, in the career of Graphic Design, Universidad de Buenos Aires; Centro Cultural Borges, ABM, ICAI and at the Escuela para Maestros de Teatro de San Miguel, Among others. She often collaborates with the following publications: Ramona, Rídicula, Hecho en Buenos Aires and El surmenage de la muerta.
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 the work Little Palm Tree, Olive and Erica (Palmerita, olivo y Érica). Oil on canvas, 1.40 m x 1.70 m. It belongs to the Garden (Jardín) series. The garden is mainly built up as of the flowerpots and plants of the terrace in my house. I register images made by their shadows at those moments in which they are moved by the wind. Positioning the stretcher on the floor, the shadows of the plants make it a receptive screen for the projected image.
Mi task is to trace these moving shadows with a pencil or a pen, chasing them on the canvas until they get lost. I relocate the stretcher underneath other plants according to the possibilities that the sun gives, the light quality and the Earth’s movement, which interrupts my work when the shadows from the surrounding buildings cancel any possible plant shade.
With this map I go to my study and I begin the work aiming to reproduce the apprehended experience in relation to the plant, its shade, the effect of light and movement building the garden like a unique living meditation. I imagine the garden as a state of happiness, like an object of hope making fiction from my experience of constituting myself into a physical emulsion during the procedure of construction of the work. This work belongs to the black paintings: they are paintings where a cloud covers the sun while I draw the shadow of the plant, thus these shapes remain unfinished. Here I work with the negative of the image, to accentuate the relationship of the work process of my painting with a photographic process, when, as a painter-artist, I function as an intermediary between the sun and the stretcher. It emerged simply from my contemplation, while I was sunbathing in the terrace. I usually exhibit them above an armchair, if it is possible for them to combine alluding to painting as an object of coexistence. Looking at it everyday, even giving our backs to it while knowing it is there.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
Everything has already been painted, and in various ways. That is my challenge. My models are flowers, vases, fruit, landscapes, light and shadow, which will never stop being painted. All the elements of the artistic language are at my disposition: my work is a reflection on them. It is born in drawing and painting, and expands to my studio, my teaching, the dictionary and all its collaborators. If they are images and/or words, according to what is demanded by the chosen format, what is always sustained as the axis is the organization, the assembly and the edition of the information. I would suggest to read the work with distance, not to seek to understand it in just one painting, one book, one event, because it acquires meaning in the group. If I offer something, I would like that to be happiness.
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?
I recognise myself in the notion of exile and the immigrant, in recycled and re-filtered information, in the mixture of stimuli, in the art of the possible and in second-hand materials.
Mi contemporary references are especially those that make their work with different media, and that leave the object to incorporate others in their projects. I refer for example to Claudia del Río with her Club del Dibujo (Drawing Club), to Graciela Hasper and Jorge Gumier Maier with their curatorial projects, to Guillermo Kuitca with his project of scholarships for artists, to Enrique Ahriman and his Television to Read (Televisión para leer), to Roberto Jacoby with the Venus currency. Of the younger ones, I am interested in Fernanda Laguna, Flavia Da Rin, Sandro Pereira and Leandro Tartaglia.
Of my contemporaries, I also choose Marina De Caro with her soft drawings and sculptures, and the speaking suitcase of Alicia Herrero.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
León Ferrari because of his insistence and his results, and the way in which he made himself heard in his last show. The Proyecto Venus (Venus Project) and the magazine ramona, because they are living examples of the transformation of the context through art.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
The field is finally open. Different means can coexist without surprise. The designers found their space, the photographers also of course, needless to say those who work with digital media. Groups are fashionable today, but they need to be sustained. In general there are fewer prejudices. Although many are yet incorporating digital art, painting is having a party everywhere.
