AN ICE CREAM THAT DEFIES MEMORY: THE REINVENTION OF THE SHIFTING STONE

Segura, whose career spans more than two decades and extends from the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires to the Triennial of Chile, the Curitiba Biennial, the Havana Biennial, and Bienalsur, as well as exhibitions at the Carrillo Gil Museum in Mexico and the Museum of the Americas in Washington, has built a body of work that challenges notions of history and memory. In Helado Piedra Movediza (Shifting Stone Ice Cream), his latest project, the history of Tandil is literally savored in every spoonful.

On February 29, 1912, the legendary Piedra Movediza (Shifting Stone) of Tandil collapsed, marking the disappearance of a symbol that, against all logic, swayed in balance atop its granite base. More than a century later, Segura channels that loss through an edible artwork: an ice cream with a stony gray hue, a disconcerting texture, and a flavor that intrigues and lingers. "It is an ephemeral monument that vanishes as it is tasted, leaving behind a living memory, as fragile and powerful as the stone itself," the artist explains.

Helado Piedra Movediza transcends gastronomy to become a material essay on the instability of memory. Its color is not just a formalist gesture; it is a direct reference to the fragments that still lie at the foot of the hill, relics of what once defied gravity. By consuming it, the spectator does not merely participate in the artwork—they incorporate it, becoming a living archive of a memory that, like the ice cream itself, melts into the sensory experience.

The project is part of a tradition of ephemeral art that shifts the artistic object into the realm of action. "I am interested in ensuring that the spectator is not a passive observer but the very center of the work. By consuming the ice cream, their body becomes a living archive, a space where memory is activated and transformed," says Segura.

The central question of this piece is not trivial: How do we commemorate what no longer exists? How do we preserve a symbol whose essence lay in its improbable balance? Helado Piedra Movediza responds to these questions through dissolution itself: the solid becomes fleeting, the permanent is relativized, and history turns into an immediate experience.

This is not a work about nostalgia; it is a work about the fragility of monuments and the persistence of memory in unexpected forms. "The mineral gray evokes the texture and materiality of the original stone, allowing the spectator to establish a direct connection with its history," Segura notes. "It is an ephemeral monument that, in its fragility, challenges the conventions of art and memory. It lives in the bodies and stories of those who experience it."

The Piedra Movediza, with its 300 tons of improbable oscillation, was for centuries an icon of instability within the seemingly eternal. In this reinterpretation, Segura translates that instability to the palate, transforming its absence into a gesture that is consumed and, in doing so, persists. Helado Piedra Movediza is, ultimately, a question about the nature of permanence. And like all great art, it offers no easy answers.