Biography
Ate age 18 I moved from Cipoletti (where I was born) to Buenos Aires, to study sculpture in the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón which, despite the fact that the great amount of hours of workshops felt like a complete waste of time, I had incredible theory classes and got to meet wonderful people. Before even finishing, I started out attending art workshops by Tulio de Sagastizábal and a seminar on writing and analysis with Alicia Romero and Marcelo Giménez. In 2002 I took part on the Workshop on artistic production and creation context, organized by TRAMA in Tucumán. In 2004 and 2005 I made an art residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, in Amsterdam. Since then I live in that city.
Among others, I participated in individual and collective exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum and in SMBA, in Galerie FonsWelters, Amsterdam; in Artis in Den Bosch, at the Centro Cultural Montehermoso en Vitoria Gasteiz, at the Encuentro Regional de Arte de Montevideo, the en Spawasser Hq in Berlín, Platform Garanti in Istambul, the Liverpool Art Biennial (2006) and the el Living Art Museum of Reykjavik, as well as the BAK in Utrecht, and INTER/medio in Córdoba.
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'm interested in developing groups of works that, originated by the same idea, bear different forms or expressions. I would be interested in my works to be like myths, to unfold into several versions or levels, none of which more valid or authentic than the other. Since in Bola de Nieve there's no place to put different versions of each work, I put just one. An example could be what I show here as the 16mm film, "To those who say goodbye", which was shot during an event called "Goodbye". In this event, making good use of the presence of an old ship on the port of Amsterdam, I distributed white handkerchiefs to the people that were boarding, and the ones that were on firm ground, passing by. I was interested in seeing if people would wave goodbye with the handkerchied, despite not having received instructions to do so, proving how shared was this code. On the other hand I was interested in a certain effect of historical catharsis. A century ago, people were departing from this port towards the Americas, to never come back. A century later, I was interested in turning this sad gesture into a momento of joy. The film, on the other hand, sets to propose something completely different. It does not have the intention of acting like a document of the event, but rather referring to the idea of documentary material, imitating it. Sensing that the origin of such a universal gesture (saying goodbye with a white handkerchief) was quite cinematographic, I used and old format to capture the scene, with the intention of mediatize it, not of showing just as it happened. The ship, the people, European migration to the Americas, the format, all of this refers to different historical moments that, when put together, creat an 'old' image. The nostalgic rhetoric and its specific manipulations was what interested me the most regarding this second stage. It was that double movement of the nostalgic impulse what motivated the film (on the one hand, it holds the memory, forces us to revisite the past by turning it to present, on the other hand, it distorts the vision of the past, putting a veil of sweetness or seduction in front of what is remembered: "all past times were better"). Even if different, the two versions share a same initial idea. Thus, one work leads to the other, avoiding to annul or repeat each other.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
The way each person wants to. Should it be absolutely necessary, I would add this quote from Cervantes' Don Quixote: "In resolution, he was so absorbed by his reading, that nights and days passed by and thus, so little was he sleeping, that his brain dried out and he lost his judgement, filling his mind with all the fantasy he extracted from the pages, Battles, challenges, wounds, loves, storms and impossible nonsenses settled so firmly in his brain, that such machine of dreamy inventions he was reading turned real, and to him there was not, in the world, a truer story than this one."
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?
In the tradition of artists who produce to be able to think upon the world.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
I haven't lived in Argentina for the past 4 years, so I find it a little difficult to answer this feeling that I'm lying a bit. I pass on this one.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
I couldn't answer this one not even if I lived in Argentina.
