BETWEEN A DRAGON AND A VIRGIN, AGAINST DOMESTICATED IMAGINATION
If there were no way to create something new—believing everything has already been done—if every form of creative intelligence were exhausted, then it would be time to unearth hidden worlds.
Carrie Bencardino’s paradise (Buenos Aires, 1993) prefers the underground, violet floors and walls. It prefers low lighting, blurred outlines, acidic colors, and oversized proportions. I train my eye accordingly. It doesn’t take long before the large, malleable objects burst from the canvas to flirt with the viewers. They are intense, expansive, yet friendly. Though the exhibition contains a dramatic note, this world feels simple, understandable. A couch, a lamp, a car—simplicity. The artist proposes an almost fantastical space, where a dragon flies and a Virgin weeps. A dream already inhabited, but open to others joining in. At the back, a short film is projected. I join the semicircle watching the peculiar video.
In it, Bencardino reveals a great fear: the exhaustion of imagination as a consequence of imposed norms. She recalls surrealism—a movement that drew upon tools like chance and the unconscious to generate new material, free from rationality, rules, and format. And she recalls it not just as an artistic movement, but as a political act capable of escaping the established order.
“I wonder if I’m capable of imagining something truly surreal,” asks the character on screen. I then ask myself the same question. Can anyone?
Though it’s the end of the route, I retrace my steps to view her work differently. Bencardino refuses to accept the atrophy of creativity and instead proposes the invention of a new world as a challenge to dominant narratives. The exhibition seeks to open spaces of resistance where it is still possible to imagine a shared horizon without falling into resignation. Where a dragon is allowed to fly beside a Virgin who mourns.
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Carrie Bernardino: El desentierro del diablo, 2025. Cortesía MALBA
The Unearthing of the Devil, curated by Carlos Gutiérrez, will be on view through October 13 at MALBA, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415, Buenos Aires (Argentina).
*Cover image: Carrie Bencardino. El mal (2025). Courtesy of MALBA.
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