LUCILA GRADÍN AT THE MARCO MUSEUM: NATIVE COSMOGONY

In her journey into the depths of the natural world, Lucila Gradín collects substances that invite other ways of understanding what surrounds us. She does not bring the beautiful and perfect forms of fruits, leaves or flowers; she brings the tints that result from their maceration. She does not look for the marvelous colors that inhabit the surface of the forest or the prairie: she looks for and finds the lower tones, the invisible ones, those that constitute the living where the human eye is not looking.

Ombú, Ceibo, Timbó, Palo borracho, Chañar and Aguaribay. Six native trees from these regions of the planet provide Gradín with a repertoire of pigments and at the same time open the way to a baggage of properties that she has been researching with delight for years. In her words, as in her works, "medicinal uses, dyeing capacities and shamanic practices" merge. The artist-alchemist explores these intersections during long hours in her workshop, absorbed in the subtleties of processes regulated by the rhythms of the species she chooses to work with.

On the felts or wool she intervenes, and on the walls of the museum itself, which has become a canvas, the colors of vegetable origin provide an opportunity for rediscovery. The texts elaborated by Gradín draw on ancestral myths and grandmothers' knowledge, invoking healing energies and rituals. It is a chromatic feast, but also a bet on introspection. In those fragments of Nature that reign in the room, the trees quietly work their magic and expand all their power.

–Eva Grinstein.

Lucila Gradín was born in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina in 1981, she lives and works in the city of Buenos Aires. She has a degree in Visual Arts, UNA - Universidad Nacional de las Artes. In 2011 she was a fellow of CIA - Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas, CABA. For ten years she has been working on the elaboration of a medicinal and dyeing herbarium in collaboration with healers, doctors, philosophers, biologists, etc.

Her solo exhibitions include: Cosmogonía Nativa, Museo MARCO CABA, Argentina (2023) Mburucuyá, CABA, Argentina (2023), El color de un Jardín, Herbario tintóreo, P21, Fundación Proa, CABA, Argentina (2022); Cromatología Vegetal, Solsticio de Verano, Centro Cultural San Martín, CABA, Argentina (2022); Indigoferea tinctoria, Galería El Mirador, CABA, Argentina (2019); La contemplación de las semillas FAAP, São Paulo, Brazil (2015); Biosfera, site specific installation at ́ el FNA (2015); La Cosmología del poroto, Foster Catena Gallery, CABA, Argentina (2014); Banquete de papas, Radio la Tribu, CABA, Argentina (2012); Casas para catástrofes, Centro Cultural Recoleta, CABA, Argentina (2011); Resistance Ranch, Radio Libertad Art space, Resistencia, Chaco (2009); Floating word flowers, Steamboat, Colorado, USA (2006); Magnolia, Proyecto A Gallery, CABA, Argentina (2005).