THE SILENCED WOMEN RAISE THEIR VOICES WITH TERESA MALUF AT PASEO DEL BUEN PASTOR
The Cordoban artist and architect Teresa Maluf presents Cuando el encierro es la salida (When Confinement Becomes the Way Out), a site-specific installation located in the chapel of Paseo del Buen Pastor in Córdoba, Argentina. With this work, Maluf pays tribute to all the women who, over nearly one hundred years, passed through this building—many of them deprived of their freedom.
Built in the late 19th century for the congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, the complex housed a religious community, a training school for domestic servants, and a women’s prison. During Argentina’s last military dictatorship, it also served as a prison for political detainees. In 1975, 26 of those political prisoners escaped, 9 of whom were subsequently murdered.
In 2000, the building was desacralized. While the prison wings were demolished due to lack of architectural value, the chapel’s structure was preserved and restored. Today, it stands as the only surviving witness to the confinement experienced by so many women.
Maluf’s work occupies the center of the chapel, directly beneath the dome. It consists of a large installation made up of an orthogonal wooden grid from which anonymous female figures emerge. These figures were constructed from non-traditional materials such as construction wood, cardboard, and coarse fabrics. They have no faces, no front or back; they are identical on both sides—nameless bodies evoking a collective memory.
The installation is completed by a lighting arrangement that defines the chapel’s crossing and by a looped soundtrack of Gregorian chants, reinforcing the spiritual and evocative quality of the space.
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Teresa Maluf: Cuando el encierro es la salida. Cortesía de Teresa Maluf
Teresa Maluf was born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1949. She is an architect and visual artist. She practiced architecture both in her hometown and for eight years in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. In 2005, she enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at the National University of Córdoba. Since 2009, she has dedicated herself fully to producing visual art. She has participated in workshops and clinics with renowned artists, and her work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Over time, her visual language has evolved from the figurative to geometric abstraction, and from two-dimensional to three-dimensional forms.
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