What the Current Carries Away

Recoleta Cultural Center, CABA. [30 Oct - 13 Mar].

Curated by: Mercedes Lozano y Violet Gonzalez Santos

Curatorial text

What does the current drag with it? How many things are stored in the sediments? A river is many things: it gathers memories, affections and imaginaries, but also claims. Its course can be a limit, a common territory, an ecosocial space, a biological body or a subject of law. The river is drought and flood. Its currents, pools and meanders imprint a particular identity on those who inhabit it. This exhibition brings together the diverse relationships that three Argentine artists built with the rivers of their territories. Watersheds that, over time, have been modified by human action and today are threatened by a logic that understands water only as a resource. Lo que arrastra la corriente exhibits the works of María Daud, from Santiago del Estero; Agustín Míguez, from Santa Fe; and Inés Tillous, from Córdoba, artists who participated in the program Híbrida laboratorio (in)disciplinario. Their works propose three ways of linking with rivers. Evoking the myth and metamorphosis of butterflies, Míguez uses 3D animation to give a magical character to the coastline; her video expands on the wall through drawing, reinforcing the idea of myth and fantasy. Daud establishes an affective relationship with the river that saw her grow up: in her works, her body and that of her daughters embody the constant generational flow. Tillous, on the other hand, constructs a political-affective link in which the river appears as a political subject, modified in the name of extractivism. Wading through the colonial gaze that reduced our watersheds to waste, extraction or frontier, these works remind us of the urgency of listening to rivers and recognizing their symbolic, cultural, political and ecological importance.

Institutional and press references
↳ Recoleta Cultural Center: Official exhibition website ↳ City Government (Discover BA): Review of the exhibition at the Recoleta ↳ Hybrid / MediaLab: Experimental laboratory registry ↳ Specialized Press: ArtInformed | Online Art | Acromatic Magazine | Video Recording (Facebook)

Curatorial text