THE ARGENTINE PAVILION IN THE VENICE BIENNALE
Ojalá se derrumben las puertas (Hopefully the Doors Will Fall Down) by artist Luciana Lamothe, curated by Sofía Dourron, is the installation presented by the Argentine Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2024.
Conceived around the architecture of the Argentine Pavilion, the work consists of four structures made up of iron scaffolding, curved phenolic strips and a series of sculptures made from scraps of discarded, burned, perforated and cut wood, as well as branches, trunks, fragments of pipes and metal knots that connect them. It states the need to overcome the hegemonic ways of inhabiting the planet, which have produced a present plagued by climatic, migratory, economic, social and territorial crises.
In tune with the curatorial statement “foreigners everywhere” formulated by the curator of the Biennale Arte 2024, Adriano Pedrosa, the artist proposes material environments in which difference is not a weakness, but the greatest of strengths. Those who circulate through the work are sensitive to experience other ways of inhabiting, queer, solidary and symbiotic forms. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas establishes an affective and sensual bond with the materials, to overflow the frontiers that separate culture and nature, the human and the non-human.
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Pabellón de Argentina. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Foto: Andrea Avezzù. Cortesía: La Bienal de Venecia.
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Pabellón de Argentina. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Foto: Andrea Avezzù. Cortesía: La Bienal de Venecia.
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Pabellón de Argentina. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Foto: Andrea Avezzù. Cortesía: La Bienal de Venecia.
Lamothe's meticulous manipulation of the material world combines elements and sequences of reactions, weights and counterweights, invokes more than human alliances and a spatial alchemy that generate new formal, aesthetic and affective possibilities for the bodies and objects they contain. It creates undisciplined spaces that oppose not only the constructive forms of modernity, but also rebel against what Malcom Ferdinand calls a “colonial way of inhabiting,” whose violence subject territories and human and non-human bodies to a system of extractivist exploitation. Each of the sculptures functions as an enveloping space that suggests other ways of conceiving our relationship with the material world around us. They contain, at the same time, forms of care and violence that are manifested in the slashes, cuts, assemblages and twists necessary for the work to maintain its form: a series of wounds and sutures that acknowledge the weight of centuries of social, spatial and material conditioning exerted on human and non-human bodies.
Argentina was the first Latin American country to take part in the International Art Exhibition La Biennale Di Venezia, in 1901. Since 2011 it has had a national pavilion of more than 500 square meters and its uninterrupted presence constitutes a valuable State policy that is consolidated through each shipment and ensures Argentina's cultural dissemination at the highest international level.
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Pabellón de Argentina. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Foto: Andrea Avezzù. Cortesía: La Bienal de Venecia.
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Pabellón de Argentina. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Foto: Andrea Avezzù. Cortesía: La Bienal de Venecia.
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Pabellón de Argentina. Ojalá se derrumben las puertas. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Foto: Andrea Avezzù. Cortesía: La Bienal de Venecia.
In addition to the exhibition in the National Pavilion, Argentina has a strong participation thanks to Adriano Pedrosa's curatorial proposal, which includes works by numerous artists born and based in Argentina.
This year, the duo Chiachio & Giannone, invited by the main sponsor of the event to exhibit two textile works, are also part of the official shipment. In addition, works by 15 Argentine artists born or based in the country are part of the exhibition curated by Pedrosa. They are Claudia Alarcon & Silät from the Wichí community La Puntana, the queer La Chola Poblete from Mendoza, Mariana Telleria from Santa Fe, Americanist painter Juana Elena Diz, and works by deceased artists Libero Badii, Elda Cerrato, Victor Cunsolo, Juan Del Prete, Raquel Forner, Maria Martorell, Emilio Pettoruti, Lidy Prati, Kazuya Sakai, Clorindo Testa and Bibi Zogbe.
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