Curated by Irene Gelfman
The Persistence of the Self
The video selection builds bridges between diverse geographies and cultural traditions: those of the West, the Andes, and the Peruvian Amazon, both in the past and in the future. The selected artists address contemporary conflicts based on ancestral notions or practices such as weaving, ceramics, cave paintings, and rituals.
From the diversity of the audiovisual pieces, the viewer is invited to reflect on how in recent years there has been a need in art to return to traditions and practices that distance us from accelerated rhythms, a counterpart to what proposes and promises a feeling of satisfaction that is as immediate as it is ephemeral. The artists take up those practices that encoded sacred meanings and rituals, ancestral knowledge, and worldviews, which during the colonial era were prohibited, persecuted, and punished to be reinterpreted in a desperate attempt at environmental awareness and cultural preservation of the self.
The body of work reminds us how many past traditions and knowledge are alive in the present, safeguarded and nurtured by the communities of which they are a part. There is a persistence of certain minor, peripheral, or hybrid aesthetics associated with concerns related to the political situation in Latin America.
At the end of the journey, the viewer will not only have information that can be transmitted but will have experienced a sensitive experience that seeks to activate in their body the ability to produce modifications in the ways in which we negotiate our subjectivity.
Participating Artists:
Antonio Villa, Mentira la verdad (2024)
Constitución Gallery (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Yerko Zlatar, Tecnología Ancestral (2023).
Younique Gallery (Paris, France | Lima, Peru)
Roxana Ramos, Erupción (2022)
Remota Gallery (Salta, Argentina)
María Daud, Abrazos de Agua (2023)
Yu&Va Gallery. (Santiago del Estero, Argentina)
Adrián Sosa, Fuerza Bruta (2020)
Pabellón 4 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Claudia Coca, Carabela (2020)
Del Paseo Gallery. (Punta del Este, Uruguay | Lima, Peru)
Antonio Paucar, Hampiq tushuy (2022) - La energía espiral del ayni (dedicated to my mother) (2023) Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Thumm Gallery
Irene Gelfman
Graduate and teacher of Middle and Higher Education in Arts (FFyL - UBA); she attended the # 11 Artists Program at UTDT (Critic and Curator). She is the winner of the first prize New Curators of the AMALITA Collection and the Argentine Association of Art Critics. She works in curation, management, and art criticism. She is the founder and director of Minerva Universos Visuales, an art studio focused on the dissemination of Art History content for diverse audiences, giving a clinic for artists and consulting for cultural projects. She writes for various media, publications and catalogs (Otra Parte, Colección de Artistas, among others). With more than seven years of experience in different areas of cultural management, both public (national and local) and private (foundations and NGOs), she coordinates and produces content. In addition, she put together the programming in areas such as theater, visuals, and music for different festivals, fairs, and international events in which Argentina was invited as a guest country. She developed and coordinated an aid program to promote Argentine artists abroad (APEX-Ministerio de Cultura Nación) and was a strategic advisor for the Barrios Creativos program.
