Biography
I was born on a warm and humid January 1960, at the antique town of San Ignacio, Misiones, Argentina. As a child I used to walk through the mountains and usually felt there was something mysterious, secret and religious beneath, there in the earth. I grew up with that. Looking backwards at my own work I can see that I departed from a very detailed way of painting, the subject has always been the nature, with pictures of flora, animals and some drawing of old botanists, entomologists etc.
Searching to see more, I felt the need to take this to a three-dimensional expression. I started doing embroidery taking the fabric as grass and soil where trees, leaves, clouds, and lianas grew, falling back again to the earth in rains, hairy bugs, flowers and roots that would sneak again into the dirt.
I did it in a vertical way, until I realized that I wanted to keep the essence of the fabric, the cloth as an object itself. I undid the frame and so the space appeared, I was then building on the space, working with the space.
Unconsciousness appears very strongly in front of me and through the work, what I do is to read it. A certain tension that is maintained all through the time of the construction of the work, in between what I see and what takes a form out there.
I was chosen for residencies and won different scholarships such as Banff, Canada, Antorchas Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, Trama of the National Fund for the Arts and the National Academy of Fine Arts, among others. In 2002 I worked in Paraguay in a town of loom weavers, (Ao poi) and lace/needle (Ju). With their help we assemble an embroidery museum in the village for one day. Lace landscapes design by me, done by them, self-portrait drawings, lairs of mixed land, termites’ homes …reflections of the landscape. This work of recovery, identification and recreation of traditional fabrics allowed me to generate a very fruitful relationship between artistic creation and popular handcraft. In 2004 from the paintings called “journey though the river” I actually went to navigate through the river. I found myself walking in the mountains again. I felt that everything I had seen there it was, confused, everything I had heard and that is how the audio work “Misionary Landscape” came up. Also the sound and fabric installation “Picnic at the Parana river shore”. Nowadays, 2008, I find myself working on pencil drawings on paper.
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 “If I earn a lot I eat a lot, if I earn a little a eat a little” a pencil drawing on paper of 1.50mts. X 2mts. I start the work with a very meticulous planning, which includes both, the selected paper and the pencil (hard HB and B). An image is shot, from that, I explore the paper and very gently the line starts to travel across. Seeking a precise and fine line that defines the image that is resolved, in a state of balance between my fingerprints, the tip of the pencil and the paper. I only pause to sharpen the pencil, like a needle. All I see is true, even the smallest detail.
I work in darkness with the only light of the projector that I use to see slides taken in my different trips and expeditions. Also based on a collection of illustrations of naturalists of previous centuries. From a profound calm, silence and concentration I attempt to bring micro worlds that are neglected and that demand a very slow lecture.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
I believe that the work contents the way in which it must be read.
