Biography
I was born in Buenos Aires, the 6th of October. I was always very short-sighted and my memories as a child take me back to see myself drawing or painting because I could see very well up close, even today I’m able to see my own pores, my eyes are like magnifying glasses. I went to live by myself when I was 19 years old, I dropped my Diplomacy studies and I entered Fine Arts, which was what I always loved. I got my National Drawing Teacher degree.
By the end of 1988 I travelled to New York City (United States), where I studied photography and I worked doing about everything. By the end of 1989 I travelled to Madrid (Spain), where I lived for two years. There I learned serigraphy and I opened up a studio with two friends of mine, near Alcalá, in a storehouse located in the middle of the countryside that has once been henhouse. There we developed our own artwork and did serigraphs for other artists. That year I also did my first individual exhibition in Buenos Aires, in the Recoleta Cultural Center. In 1992 I returned to New York from Madrid, where I learned techniques to restore antiques and techniques to paint murals for other people.
In 1994 I returned to Buenos Aires because I was presenting an individual exhibition, but I met Pablo Siquier, and two years later we got married -and divorced as well- but it was great. We did a huge party, Marcos López took the pictures and Gustavo Bruzzone filmed the video. In 2000 I won a scholarship in London, to develop a project about how to apply genetic algorithms in the digital image evolution, but I stayed to be Bautista’s mother, so now I live and work in Buenos Aires.
Other important things: in 1996 I belonged to “Taller Barracas” of the Antorchas Foundation, a very nutritious experience; I participated in many exhibitions held in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Madrid, United Stated; I was invited to the 1997 Biennial of the Habana and the 2001 Biennial of the Mercosur. I am honoured to have an artwork in the MAMBA Museum and two in the MACRO Museum. I’ve been awarded with many prizes that surprise me, which I am very grateful of. I like very much to be an artist, and I like artists. Without a doubt, this profession is the best ever, I feel very lucky.
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.
'Lima 1945- Buenos Aires 1997' (1997). Interactive audio-visual installation with variable measures (35 x 15 cm each object). Photos, voice digitizers, infra-red (IR) sensors, speakers, mirrors, acrylic, plastic. This is the last artwork I did with my mom and my grandmother (I worked with the three of us several years, applying different techniques, looking for repetitions, similarities and differences).
The idea is that you can see my grandmother’s house in Lima (1945), according to her perception and listen to what she thought of those spaces. The original pictures were taken by her and they are of her house’s spaces, there is nobody in them and that is very important to for this particular artwork (unlike the other ones, in which we have several bodies each).
Behind the photos my grandmother writes and my mother reads what she wrote. The little boxes are not very big so you have to look at them closely. With this approach the sensors capture your heat and activates my mom’s voice that tells you something about each room. Besides listening to it, you are able to read the text because it is reflected in a mirror.
I like that the only present body and in present and time is the body of the spectator, and that we three are diluted in what it’s seen, thought, said (we are not even included in the pictures).
It’s like an operation of failed resurrection, a poetic Frankenstein.
I choose this artwork because I still like it, and because it’s been a while since I last seen it due to the fact that it now belongs to the MAMBA collection and I would love to see it again somehow.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
My artwork is –to me- a plug of beauty that I try to put into my sensitivity that is rather dramatic. It’s my way to think about alternatives of lives and perceptions, wishes that I say out loud –or rather through form and image- that things might be different, even more beautiful, that there might be something else there that we didn’t see and that everything can start again and again, giving us infinite lives, perceptions, opportunities. A while ago I worked these ideas related to the no-death in my close family, where I saw myself reflected in a mirror that is placed in front of another mirror and therefore produces the reflection of infinite identical images. In these paintings we all had several bodies of different ages at the same time in the same place, and they were very colourful (like a celebration). Some years later I took the decision to work these same ideas but from the outside, and I went to the countryside with my camera. I wanted to look for outside what I had found in my family’s archaeology, the repetitions, something that appears to have no beginning or end. I took pictures of nature, from landscapes to flowers, nature is very generous. What I do is to cut those pictures in very precise places, like a surgeon that later sews the pieces, and I make a new image that could continue infinitely to all directions, trying that –in spite of my manipulation- the final image is still beautiful and harmonious. I also work digitally the colour, I like them to have a pictorial and hipper-real touch, that they stay within a limit; that the pictures can be a little bit beautiful but also strange, a little bit like a picture but not entirely, and that they are based in something real and recognizable but with a new form. The glass sculptures also have natural forms (plants or animals), that get filled or emptied of coloured liquid in identical time intervals. This action repeats infinitely. This means that this is one same idea, with another shape. I have only one idea, I admit it.
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’m interested in many of them, although I can’t speak of a tradition, at all, only of people I admire and that nurture me or teach me things from their artwork. To say Duchamp and Man Ray is too obvious? Let’s go to the local ones, that are many anyway, this is just a trim. Of those I remember now (and from the back to the front), I would start with Cándido López, of his painting I like his excessive refinement, the delayed time he takes to make the details, the beauty of his landscapes, the pain of some minimal men. I like the details and to look closely, to invest a lot of time in the artwork, to obsess and dream of it. Luis Benedit and Pablo Suárez thought me a lot. I had the immense luck to have them as tutors in the Taller de Barracas. It was a luxury and very generous of them as artists, I am forever grateful to them. Liliana Porter is brilliant, lucid and playful, and technically impeccable. I like all her work, like the video she presented in Ruth Benzacar Gallery (Buenos Aires) some years ago: it blew my mind. Of my contemporaries, the so called artists of the 90s, I like almost all of them, because they are excellent artists and because I saw them sustain their artwork during all these years, something really admirable. I always liked very much Ballestero’s artwork, I like his science fiction mind that is behind his work, but what’s really amazing is that his artistic result is also very good. Nicola Costantino is a mayor artist; she combines tenacity, ideas, technique and a fascinating madness. Of all the people I mention, besides the fact it is just a trim, I can relate with some of them and others I like precisely because they do something I couldn’t. Pombo, Avello, Diana Aizemberg, for instance. I love Jacoby, he is so smart that he intimidates me. Of the younger generations I like Luciana Lamothe, Eduardo Basualdo, Virginia Spinelli and Verónica Gómez, and I apologize to the ones I like but can’t remember right now.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
When I think of art, some particular artworks pop into my head (not exhibitions precisely), unless we are talking about a retrospective, which are always illuminating. However I highlight Pablo Siquier’s individual exhibitions, the two he presented in Ruth Benzacar Gallery were unbelievable. The sensation was too strong when you entered the gallery, even though his work is always impeccable, but I’m talking about the strength that all his work had when placed together.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
I would highlight Fernanda Laguna’s work with Belleza y Felicidad, the work of Venusinos, Trama, and so many other artists that are generating things with other artists; the group works in all the country, I believe they did a gigantic and very necessary contribution. It is also outstanding the change in photography’s acceptance, digital or not, and video y others in the field of the fine arts (ten years ago this was something else, very different).
