Darkness Visible: The Long Shadow of Dictatorship [Oscuridad visible: La larga sombra de la dictadur
AN EXHIBITION BY THE MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO DE BUENOS AIRES
THIS IS AN EXHIBITION TO MARK THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE COUP D’ÉTAT THAT USHERED IN ARGENTINA’S LAST MILITARY DICTATORSHIP (1976–1983), A REGIME OF STATE TERROR THAT IMPLEMENTED A SYSTEMATIC POLICY OF CENSORSHIP, KIDNAPPINGS, TORTURE, MURDER AND THE FORCED DISAPPEARANCE OF 30,000 PEOPLE, WHILE DRIVING THOUSANDS MORE INTO EXILE AND STEALING THE BABIES BORN TO THE WOMEN IT HELD IN CAPTIVITY. UNDER THIS REGIME, THE GOVERNMENT BRUTALLY REPRESSED ALL FORMS OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION. THIS HISTORIC TRAUMA LEFT DEEP WOUNDS IN SOCIETY, RESULTING IN A TRAIL OF IMAGES, ABSENCES AND SCARS THAT CONTINUE TO SHAPE HOW THE VIOLENCE IS REMEMBERED, PERCEIVED AND RETOLD. FIFTY YEARS ON FROM THE START OF THIS HORRIFIC CHAPTER IN ARGENTINE HISTORY, AND IN LIGHT OF THE CURRENT THREATS TO AND ATTACKS ON DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE, WE CONSIDER IT IMPERATIVE TO REVISIT THE WAYS ARTISTS HAVE ADDRESSED VIOLENCE – BOTH IN ITS MOST OVERT AND BRUTAL MANIFESTATIONS AND IN ITS SUBTLER, YET EQUALLY EFFECTIVE, FORMS.
BRINGING TOGETHER NINETEEN ARTISTS AND COLLECTIVES, MOSTLY FROM ARGENTINA AND FROM A WIDE RANGE OF GENERATIONS AND WORKS SPANNING THE 1970S TO THE PRESENT, THIS EXHIBITION POSITIONS ART (WITH ITS UNDERSTANDING OF THE SENSORY AND OF THE POWER OF THE BODY, AND ITS CAPACITY TO MOVE ALONG THE THRESHOLD BETWEEN THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE) AS A VEHICLE FOR UNDERSTANDING HISTORY, PROTECTING MEMORY AND HUMAN RIGHTS, ENGAGING IN ACTIVISM AGAINST STATE TERROR AND RAISING AWARENESS OF VIOLENCE. THE EXHIBITION INCLUDES WORKS
BY MAJOR CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS WHO RESPONDED TO THIS HISTORIC MOMENT WITH CONCERN, CONDEMNATION OR CRITICISM; ARTISTS WHO EMBODIED THE TRANSITION FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY; AND ARTISTS WHO CONTINUE TO DENOUNCE THE VIOLENCE THAT PREVAILS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES AND THE INCREASING PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND LGBTQ+ COMMUNITIES, MOST NOTABLY IN THE FORM OF FEMICIDE.
IN PARADISE LOST (1667), JOHN MILTON USES THE TERM “DARKNESS VISIBLE” TO DESCRIBE HELL. THIS OXYMORON SERVES AS AN APT METAPHOR FOR THE ROLE OF THE VISUAL ARTS IN BRINGING TO LIGHT WHAT HAS BEEN HIDDEN OR CENSORED AND YET REMAINS UNBEARABLY PRESENT. BY BRINGING TOGETHER THE WORK OF ARTISTS WHO HAVE FACED THE HORRORS OF VIOLENCE IN ITS MANY FORMS, THE EXHIBITION RAISES QUESTIONS: HOW CAN ART GIVE VISIBILITY TO BODIES, IDEAS AND LIVES THAT WERE FORCIBLY DISAPPEARED? WHAT VISUAL AND CULTURAL FORMS HAVE THE POWER TO DENOUNCE ATROCITIES WITHOUT REPRODUCING MECHANISMS OF SPECTACLE OR BANALISATION? HOW IS HISTORIC TRAUMA PASSED DOWN, TRANSFORMED AND REINTERPRETED ACROSS GENERATIONS TO KEEP THE ACT OF REMEMBERING ALIVE? HOW DOES POLITICAL AUTHORITARIANISM INTERSECT WITH GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE? HOW CAN SPACES FOR POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION BE CREATED AND UPHELD – IN THE STREETS, THE UNDERGROUND OR NIGHTLIFE SETTINGS – IN CONTEXTS OF EXTREME AUTHORITARIANISM? GIVEN THE CURRENT DEMOCRATIC INSTABILITY ACROSS THE GLOBE, THESE QUESTIONS TAKE ON A SENSE OF URGENCY. THE STRATEGIES DEVISED BY THE ARTISTS OF DARKNESS VISIBLE PROTECT MEMORY AND GUIDE US THROUGH THE SHADOWS OF THE PRESENT.
LEÓN FERRARI
(BUENOS AIRES, 1920-2013)
León Ferrari devoted his life to calling out the horrors of authoritarianism, the abuse of power and the crimes against humanity unleashed by the Vietnam War and the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). A prolific artist and tireless activist, in his series “Nosotros no sabíamos” [“We Didn’t Know”] – composed of 83 collages of newspaper articles from 1976 – Ferrari denounced crimes against thousands of civilians during that year in Argentina, dismantling the social argument that claimed civilian ignorance, showing that State violence was present in the media and thus visible, legible, and systematically denied. As Ferrari explained in 1992, these were “news items that managed to slip through the filter of censorship, or were allowed to pass as messengers of terror.”1 The series turns the viewer into a belated witness, confronting them with their own ethical position. Through accumulation and repetition, it reveals how journalistic language contributed to normalizing terror. As a tragic coda to this series, Ariel Adrián Ferrari, the artist’s son, was kidnapped by the military on February 25, 1977, and later forcibly disappeared. The series was discontinued as León embarked on a lifelong quest to find out what had happened to him.
1 León Ferrari, Nosotros no sabíamos [We Didn’t Know] (1976/1992). The complete collages can be accessed at: https:// leonferrari.com.ar/ nosotros-no-sabiamos.
THIS SERIES TURNS THE VIEWER INTO A BELATED WITNESS, CONFRONTING THEM WITH THEIR OWN ETHICAL POSITION.
1976. Digital print on paper 74 × 44 cm
Nosotros no sabíamos [We Didn’t Know], 1976. Collection of press articles on military repression in
Courtesy of Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari Arte y Acervo (FALFAA) and Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS)
EDUARDO GIL
(BUENOS AIRES, 1948)
Eduardo Gil produced some of the most iconic photographic records of the so-called graphic action known as El Siluetazo which took place on September 21-22, 1983, on the occasion and as visual support of the Tercera Marcha de la Resistencia [Third Resistance Demonstration] organised by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo during the final months of the military dictatorship in Argentina. El Siluetazo was a collective action organised by artists and human rights activists Rodolfo Arregueberry, Julio Flores and Guillermo Kexel in which participants traced life-size silhouettes of their bodies on paper and pasted them in and around Plaza de Mayo to represent the people disappeared by the regime. Gil photographed the action as it unfolded, capturing not only the finished silhouettes but, crucially, the collective process of their making: bodies lying on the ground, hands drawing outlines, sheets of paper circulating, and the gradual occupation of this historic square in Buenos Aires. As a public intervention, El Siluetazo rendered absence visible.
Digital print on fine art paper
[Cops and Silhouettes: The SilhouetteCoup. Buenos Aires, September 21/22, 1983], 1983
2. Silueteando IV. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires, 21/22 de setiembre de 1983
[Silhouetting IV: The Silhouette-Coup. Buenos Aires, September 21/22, 1983], 1983
Bettina Tarnopolsky. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires, 21/22 de septiembre de 1983 [Bettina Tarnopolsky: The Silhouette-Coup. Buenos Aires, September 21/22, 1983], 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
x
LUIS PAZOS
(LA PLATA, 1940-2023)
Conceptual artist, visual poet, and journalist Luis Pazos also anticipated the mass violence that would soon occur when he created Transformaciones de masas en vivo [Live Mass Transformations] (1973) with high school students from Colegio Nacional Rafael Hernández in La Plata. A central figure in the city’s experimental conceptual scene – where practices such as visual and experimental poetry, mail art, and happenings expanded the boundaries between literature, performance, and visual art – Pazos developed his work through his formative relationship with artist and theorist Edgardo Antonio Vigo (La Plata, Argentina, 1928-1997), a key figure in international avant-garde networks who taught drawing to the school’s students. Through these collective actions that the artist referred to as “living sculptures”, photographed at his request by Carlos Mendiburu Eliçabe, Pazos explored the body not only as a sculptural and visual element but also as a political medium, an agent of collective change. This series of photographs documents ephemeral actions in which the group gathers to form simple visual configurations or political symbols – i.e. in reference to Peronism – in the public space of the schoolyard as well as in uninhabited urban spaces, exploring possible dramatic choreographies, and the shifting geometries of the social body. In some images, the bodies appear sprawled across the ground, creating poses that acquire an ominous charge in retrospect, as several of the performers would be among the many students forcibly disappeared by the military Junta that came to power shortly after, in 1976.
Hombres enlatados II [Tinned Men II], from the “Transformaciones de masas en vivo” [‘Live Mass Transformation’] series, 1973
Digital print on fine art paper 50 x 50 cm
Arco y flecha [Bow and Arrow
from
“Transformaciones de masas en vivo” [‘Live Mass Transformation’] series, 1973
Digital print on fine art paper 34 x 50 cm
of the artist
Acumulación [Accumulation], from the “Transformaciones de masas en vivo” [‘Live Mass Transformation’] series, 1973
Digital print on fine art paper 34 x 50 cm
],
the
Collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
1. Siluetas y canas. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires, 21/22 de setiembre de 1983
Digital print on fine art paper 34 x 50 cm
x 50 cm
34 cm
ALDO SESSA
(BUENOS AIRES, 1939)
The photographic practice of Aldo Sessa has been notably driven by a profound obsession with documenting urban life and capturing the heartbeat of Buenos Aires across decades, all of which has led to the creation of a monumental archive of over 5,000,000 photographic images. This fascination has led him to witness pivotal moments in which the public space has been reclaimed as a site for democracy, as was the case of El Siluetazo, also photographed by Eduardo Gil. Sessa registered the early demonstrations against the military dictatorship, documenting the courage of human rights organisations founded in 1977 – the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo – who called for the return of their disappeared children and grandchildren and demanded that the military government locate and restore the identities of illegally appropriated children, many of them born in clandestine detention centres.
Untitled, from the “Manifestación de Madres de Plaza de Mayo” [‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’] series, Buenos Aires, 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
60 x 40 cm
Untitled, from the “Manifestación de Madres de Plaza de Mayo” [‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’] series, Buenos Aires, 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
20 x 40 cm
Untitled, from the “Manifestación de Madres de Plaza de Mayo” [‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’] series, Buenos Aires, 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
30 x 40 cm
Courtesy of the artist
MARCELO BRODSKY
(BUENOS AIRES, 1954)
Marcelo Brodsky also suffered the regime’s violence first-hand: his brother Fernando and friends from his youth were forcibly disappeared and he himself was forced into exile during the last military dictatorship in Argentina. These traumatic life experiences persist and have since shaped a conceptual photographic body of work that has actively engaged with the human rights movements that emerged to denounce and confront State violence. Autorretrato ejecutado [Self-Portrait Executed] (1979) was shot in Barcelona, where the artist went into exile after the military attempted to abduct him in Buenos Aires. Los campos IV [The Camps IV] documents a demonstration by Madres de Plaza de Mayo –the human rights organisation founded in 1977 by a group of mothers whose children had forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship and who regularly demonstrated at Plaza de Mayo to demand their return or information about their fate. In this image, the artist’s own mother is shown, seeking information about Fernando’s whereabouts and holding up a banner that draws connections between concentration camps in Warsaw and ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada), the naval training school in Buenos Aires that operated as the largest clandestine detention, torture, and extermination camp in Argentina during the dictatorship.
Autorretrato fusilado
[Self-Portrait, Executed by Firing Squad], Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, Barcelona, 1979
Traditional photographic print using silver salts on photographic paper
55 x 36,5 cm
————————
Los Campos IV, Sara, [The Camps IV, Sara] from the ‘Camps’ series, 2014
Archive photograph on cotton paper with interventions in crayon, ink and watercolour
67 x 100 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Rolf Art gallery
MARTA MINUJÍN
(BUENOS AIRES, 1943)
In the late 1970s, the great Argentine artist Marta Minujín conceived a series of ambitious, large-scale projects for mass public participation titled La caída de los mitos [The Fall of Universal Myths]. El Obelisco acostado [The Obelisk Lying Down] was first presented at the First Latin American Biennial of São Paulo in 1978, at the height of the military dictatorship in Argentina. With irony, subtlety and humour, Minujín poignantly toppled this urban icon of Buenos Aires, which appeared hollow and manifestly open for people to walk through, effecting utopic, horizontal change in the realm of the symbolic. The exhibition also presents El Partenón de libros [The Parthenon of Books], realised for the first time on December 10, 1983, the date when Argentina celebrated the return of democracy. Here, Minujín reconstructed the Greek temple using thousands of books that had been banned during the dictatorship. At the end of the project, she tilted the structure and encouraged the public distribution of the previously-censored books. Finally, also present in this exhibition is Estatua de la Libertad caída [The Statue of Liberty Falling Down], also conceived in the 1970s but to date an unrealised project. Aside from questioning the sacralisation of the monument and the myth of American freedom, the project takes on a prophetic meaning in light of recent attacks on democratic symbols, principles, and institutions in several parts of the world.
WITH IRONY, SUBTLETY AND HUMOUR, MINUJÍN POIGNANTLY TOPPLED THE OBELISK, URBAN ICON OF BUENOS AIRES, WHICH APPEARED HOLLOW AND MANIFESTLY
OPEN FOR PEOPLE TO WALK THROUGH, EFFECTING UTOPIC, HORIZONTAL CHANGE IN THE REALM OF THE SYMBOLIC.
1. Mitos populares desmitificándose [Popular Myths Demystified], 1986 Ink print on tracing paper 69 x 99 cm
4. El Partenón de libros [The Parthenon of Books], 1983
Graphite on cellulose paper 48 x 68 cm
5. El Partenón de libros The Parthenon of Books], 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
47.5 x 47,5 cm
6. El Partenón de libros
[The Parthenon of Books], 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
47.5 x 47,5 cm
Exhibition copy
7. El Partenón de libros
[The Parthenon of Books], 1983
Digital print on fine art paper
47.5 x 47,5 cm
Exhibition copy
8. La estatua de la libertad acostada [The Statue of Liberty Lying Down], 1979
Diazonium salts and ammonia reagent primer on sensitive cellulose paper 89 x 106,5 cm
Exhibition copy
9. La estatua de la libertad acostada [Statue of Liberty Lying Down], 1979
Diazonium salts and ammonia reagent primer on sensitive cellulose paper
69,8 x 99,4 cm
Exhibition copy
Courtesy of the artist and Kurimanzutto.
LUIS CAMNITZER
(LÜBECK, 1937)
Uruguayan artist, writer, educator and activist Luis Camnitzer has devoted his life to affirming the importance of art as a vehicle to critically analyse reality and effect concrete change. A leading figure in Latin American conceptual art, Camnitzer considers himself an ethical anarchist concerned, in his own words, “with the equal distribution of power and with the role education might have in achieving it.” Having contributed to reforming the School of Fine Arts in Montevideo in 1960, during the next decade he followed closely the political turmoil in the Southern Cone and,
understanding art as politics, denounced the excesses of violence rife in the region’s military dictatorships. Execution (1970-2026) is the result of an early conceptual strategy to confront political violence. Here, the shattered mirror is apparently struck by a bullet and the viewer sees their own image fractured or shot. Are we the killer? Are we the victim? Unlike his previous work This Is a Mirror. You Are a Written Sentence (1966–68), where the mirror invited linguistic reflection on identity, here conceptual reflection becomes a direct encounter with violence.
AN EARLY CONCEPTUAL STRATEGY TO CONFRONT POLITICAL VIOLENCE. ARE WE THE KILLER? ARE WE THE VICTIM?
Ejecución [Execution], 1970 Mirror, epoxy resin and engraving Edition of ten Reconstruction
Courtesy of the artist
NICANOR ARÁOZ
(BUENOS AIRES, 1981)
In the dazzling, liminal sculptural work of Nicanor Aráoz two clashing drives coalesce. On the one hand, a fervent belief in the power of art to materialise hallucinatory visions and desires, both for himself and for humanity. On the other, an understanding of art as exorcism, as a vehicle to allow for existential trauma to find a place where healing may perhaps take place. For this exhibition, Aráoz has chosen to create Glótica 3 (Argentina Brava Mix), a new work reminiscent of the Stations of the Cross in which the artist himself for the first time appears. Unlike previous versions of Glótica dated 2015, here the figures are whole, less dismembered, less torn. They are able to speak out. Each figure stands against a fluorescent panel, where we visualise ripped-up architectures, the divided States of the world. Araóz stages what critic Alejo Ponce de León has described as “an intense display of reality,” as the artist allows himself to process and address his mother’s brutal femicide, and the repressive traits and violence exerted by his father – a Malvinas War veteran who survived the sinking of the the cruiser ARA General Belgrano. Glótica 3 is, notwithstanding the tragedies involved, a celebration of art: of its capacity to process tension, to cry and denounce, to explore matter and desire, to investigate life and death, eroticism and crime, madness and reason, and to do so while keeping close to the artist’s loves: the spectacles of fashion, cyberpunk, camp and the rhythms and beats of electronic music.
1, 3, 4. Pieces from the Work Glótica 3 Polyurethane, plaster, paint, metal, neon, acrylic and laser printing Dimensions variable
2, 5, 6. Installation view of Glótica, BARRO Gallery, Buenos Aires, 2015
Courtesy of the artist and BARRO gallery
GUILLERMO KUITCA
(BUENOS AIRES, 1961)
Working in the liminal space between visual arts and theatre, Guillermo Kuitca has produced a recent set of drawings that expand our capacity for empathy towards human pain and suffering. At each drawing, the protagonist-viewer is invited to inhabit an interior space. Some bear the marks of seething human energies past; others allow the viewer to embrace solitary sleeping figures; still others let the viewer roam through cold, damp forests, where just abandoned chairs stand in orderly rows; one final drawing of empty
1
chairs and objects suspended from the ceiling in disarray conjures some grand tragic finale. Each scene does not merely represent the pain of humanity; every image aches with the agony of individual and social subjectivities past and present. These beautiful, austere drawings address a Freudian question: In what does the work performed by mourning now consist? These are performative drawings capable of eliciting a seismic psychological disruption1 in the viewer. Standing before them, we become actors in – or witnesses to – a drama that is alive with actual lived
experience. But Kuitca goes still further, displaying a unique ability to conjoin subjective experience, spatial thought, and political reflection, with trauma at its structural core. As early as 1980, at the age of just 19, Kuitca created the visionary painting Del 1 al 30.000 [From 1 to 30,000]. Every last one of these numbers was drawn on the canvas consecutively, echoing the symbolic number that diverse human rights organisations had begun to give as the total of Argentina´s disappeared under its military dictatorship.
See Gavin Delahunty in Psychic Wounds: On Art & Trauma (Dallas: The Warehouse & New York: MW Editions, 2021), p.12.
For Flavia Da Rin, art means putting herself on stage. A one-woman show, hers is a lifetime of practice dedicated to the creation of images that fully express what it means to imagine: to critically observe the world and the dynamics within which we function, to seek alternatives, including fantasy, from one’s innermost truth. To do this, she walks a fine line: the initial subject of each of her staged photographs, she quickly hides in the guise of her own fictional characters. Flavia is thus the scriptwriter, the characterdesigner, the image-maker, the props, costume and stage designer and producer,
1. Untitled, from the “Rapada” [‘Skinned’] series, 2009
Digital print on fine art paper
100 x 75 cm
2. Untitled, from the “Rapada” [‘Skinned’] series, 2009
Digital print on fine art paper
70 x 68,4 cm
3. Untitled, from the “Rapada” [‘Skinned’] series, 2009
Digital print on fine art paper
100 x 140,5 cm
4. Untitled, from the “Rapada” [‘Skinned’] series, 2009
Digital print on fine art paper
100 x 159 cm
the make-up artist, the photographer, the post-production digital producer, a process taking place in her studio home in central Buenos Aires. In Rapada [Shaved] (2009), the artist-turned-character appears with her head shaved. She sets the viewer at a distance, even as a voyeur of the images she is producing. This is one of the series Da Rin created out of a need to stand up to the commercial pressures of the art world. Inspired by Britney Spears’s radical headshave in 2007, this series operates on at least four levels: the rejection of the normalisation of womanhood as associated with the stereotypical image of
commercial femininity as fuelled by mass media in the digital age; a deep empathy towards women enduring extreme pressure and crisis; the rejection to blindly produce for the art market; and establishing noise –that digital blur quoting the circulation and oppression of mass media – as the chosen language to give life to her subject matter. In this exhibition, these images stand as a call for the respect of privacy and integrity. They also recall the need to remember that the military demanded many features of the same stereotype during the dictatorship.
Courtesy of the artist and Tomás Redrado Art
LILIANA MARESCA
(AVELLANEDA, 1951 - BUENOS AIRES, 1994)
HER WORK WAS SENSUAL, DEFIANT, MARKED BY FRACTURE AND PAIN.
Liliana Maresca, an artist, performer, and catalyst of alternative social circuits acting at the crossroads of diverse artistic circuits in Buenos Aires – visual arts, theatre, music, dance and literature – introduced a desacralizing attitude into the underground scene during the 1980s and early 1990s, in the aftermath of the military dictatorship in Argentina and before she died from AIDS-related complications. Her profoundly political work took the form of intimate, existentialist statements, whereby the artist would defy the social conventions of a fundamentally
1
de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2016), p. 47.
conservative time, provoking reflections on ethics, equity, and the importance of the spiritual in art in order to confront the tense atmosphere that resulted from the traumatic years of the dictatorship and the continuing subtle, structural psychological violence still exerted on women and LGBTQ+ communities in Argentina. The sculptural objects present in her photoperformances literally constrain her body, attacking it, piercing it, hindering breathing and movement. Maresca roamed the city searching for discarded materials with which to build these sculptures. She
would then test them on her body in a photography session with Marcos López (Santa Fe, Argentina, 1958; lives and works in Buenos Aires). The resulting work offers a key to Argentina’s post-dictatorship period: sensual, almost libertine, and at the same time marked by fracture and pain. In the artist´s words, “[i]t was a happy time, a time of great enthusiasm about our art. We were going to change the world. We were setting all that vitality against a society that produced dead people, repressed misshapen people. We lived in fear, you had to be brave to live and to show your work.” 1
Untitled, Liliana Maresca with her work, 1983 Photograph by Marcos López Digital print on fine art paper 120 x 80 cm
Untitled, Liliana Maresca with her work, 1983 Photograph by Marcos López Digital print on fine art paper 100 x 100 cm
Courtesy of Liliana Maresca’s Estate, Marcos López and Rolf Art gallery
Liliana Maresca’s manuscripts quoted by Javier Villa in the essay “Forma = Determinación. Liliana Maresca 1982-1994.” In: Liliana Maresca (Buenos Aires: Museo
GIANNI MESTICHELLI
(ASCOLI PICENO, 1945)
At the height of the dictatorship, in 1980, photographer Gianni Mestichelli joined the Argentine Mime Company (Compañía Argentina de Mimo), led by the pioneering theatre director Ángel Elizondo (1932–2022). At a time when traditional theatres were closely monitored, Elizondo’s school and company became a vital sanctuary for bodily experimentation, where gesture and silence functioned as powerful tools for expression and political resistance against censorship and repression. Acting as a “participant witness”, Mestichelli photographed Elizondo’s rehearsals and performances, which often featured key figures of the burgeoning underground scene. Mestichelli’s images in Darkness Visible show tense postures and ominous humour, revealing how the violence of the dictatorship remained etched on the performers’ bodies. Even in spaces dedicated to play and creativity, the underground theatre of the 1980s operated as a clandestine laboratory of democracy, using the physical presence of the actor to challenge the regime’s attempts to silence the public sphere. But there was another chapter in the political dimension of Mestichelli’s work after democracy was formally restored in 1983. In 1986, an exhibition of these photographs was censored by the democratic government on grounds of obscenity. This paradox exposed the lingering fragility of the new democratic era and demonstrated how State-sanctioned violence and moral policing continued to operate long after the formal end of the dictatorship in 1983.
ORGANIZACIÓN NEGRA
(BUENOS AIRES, 1984-1993)
The collective La Organización Negra was founded by Pichón Baldinu and Manuel Hermelo in the immediate wake of Argentina’s return to democracy. From its inception, this experimental theatre group demonstrated that the psychological and physical violence of the dictatorship remained deeply etched in individual bodies and the collective social memory in Argentina. Their early works included public interventions, or “guerrilla exercises” – such as El fusilamiento [The Shooting] – created to disrupt the daily lives of passersby through radical shock tactics. This strategy reached its zenith in 1986 with UORC. Staged outside the confines of conventional theatres, UORC subjected spectators to intense situations of uncertainty and physical proximity. By mimicking the aesthetics of State repression, the performance evoked a climate of terror that underscored the persistence of a traumatic past, bringing the defiant energy of punk rock into the realm of performance art. The radical experimentation of UORC challenged the boundaries between actor and audience and paved the way for new physical languages in Argentine theatre. Following the group’s dissolution in the early 1990s, its legacy continued through the creation of world-renowned ensembles such as De la Guarda (1992) and later Fuerza Bruta (2003).
THE COLLECTIVE SUBJECTED SPECTATORS TO INTENSE SITUATIONS OF UNCERTAINTY AND PHYSICAL PROXIMITY.
M1F30
Courtesy of the artist
UORC, La película [UORC: The Movie], 1992 Documentary film by Ezequiel Abalos
33 min, 1 s
Courtesy of Ezequiel Abalos and Pompi Gutnisky
SERGIO DE LOOF (BUENOS
AIRES, 1962-2020)
Adefining force in the cultural landscape of post-dictatorship Argentina, Sergio De Loof was the quintessential artist’s artist, a figure whose life and work existed in a state of permanent, defiant fusion. Eccentric and charismatic, he was essentially counter-cultural, a figure that the mainstream could never fully tame or absorb. De Loof did not merely participate in the underground; he designed its most sacred spaces. Through the founding of legendary nightclubs such as Bolivia (1989), El Dorado (1990), and Ave Porco (1994), he transformed Buenos Aires nightlife into a radical political statement, where hedonism served as a trench for resistance. De Loof’s practice was inherently multidisciplinary, weaving together fashion, performance, photography and poetry to dismantle conventional hierarchies of taste and class and the sexual orientation and gender identity of the time. He pioneered a trash aesthetic through a visionary approach that transmuted discarded waste and recycle materials into high-fashion masterpieces. These were not simply garments; they were the vestments of a new sociability. His performative runway shows functioned as theatrical riots, reclaiming the body, gender and desire as territories for unfiltered experimentation. By centring the marginal and the dissident, De Loof turned the nightclub into a queer laboratory. In his world, there were no boundaries between the social and the artistic; to exist was to create. By elevating the discarded and the forgotten, he radically politicised joy, proving that in the face of normative constraints, celebration is the ultimate act of defiance.
ARCHIVO DE LA MEMORIA TRANS
(BUENOS AIRES, 2014)
The history of Argentina’s trans-travesti community – shaped by systematic marginalisation, State violence, and social exclusion – has become one of the central focuses of the community memory work carried out by the Archivo de la Memoria Trans (AMT). Founded in 2012 by María Belén Correa, following a longheld vision she had nurtured alongside her fellow trans activist Claudia Pía Baudracco, the Archive began with personal photographs documenting lives shaped by affection, solidarity, and survival, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when police orders were systematically used to persecute and control the presence of these communities in public spaces. In 2014, together with visual artist Cecilia Estalles, a formal process of collection and preservation was established to safeguard the Archive. The images gathered by the Archive document the continuity of State violence against trans bodies and the forced exile many experienced even after the end of the last military dictatorship in 1983, challenging the historic notion of a clean return to democracy. It took two decades of political organisation for the Gender Identity Law to pass in 2012, to enable the institutional recognition of trans persons as legitimate citizens according to their self-perceived gender. Darkness Visible includes a selection of photographs from the AMT from the 1970s onwards. Amongst them, Baudracco poses before iconic Buenos Aires landmarks such as the Teatro Colón and the National Congress, turning experiences of terror – such as the Ford Falcon car associated with clandestine kidnappings during the dictatorship – into one of defiant presence. By painstakingly collecting, preserving, cataloguing and exhibiting over 30,000 photographs and documents, the Archivo de la Memoria Trans stands up to the erasure of identities, memory and history of the trans-travesti community in Argentina, transforming records of intimate beauty, early public manifestations, festive spaces such as carnivals, and pictures taken in exile, into affective devices that challenge official narratives.
Pieles maravillosas
[
Photograph by Pompi Gutnisky
Courtesy of Archivo de la Memoria Trans
Latin Winter by CLatina Winter by Cottolengo Fashion, fashion show held at Garage Argentino, Buenos Aires, 1989
Photograph by Pompi Gutnisky
Marvellous Furs], fashion show held at Garage Argentino, Buenos Aires, 1990
Courtesy of Fundación IDA (Investigación en Diseño Argentino) – Sergio De Loof Fund
ANA GALLARDO
(ROSARIO, 1958)
The artistic practice of Ana Gallardo is a lifetime of work dedicated to giving visibility to gender violence as it affects girls and women throughout contemporary Latin America. Hers is a profound understanding of art as politics and activism, as a tool to “talk about the thing no one wants to talk about.” 1 The daughter of an artist who died when Gallardo was only 7 years old, one of her traits has been her work on memory, working through the traces and objects that survived her mother. Time and again, Gallardo’s monumental drawings denounce violence, giving visibility to girls and young women rescued from human trafficking in Argentina, Mexico and Guatemala, women who have lost their dignity and, thus shamed, cover their faces. Alive or dead, victims of what the artist refers to as the “femicide machine”, these are women grounded in a local history, whose lives are attached to the territories to which they belong. Most of these drawings are done in charcoal, a material claiming rootedness in the soil, the same landscape to which many of the murdered bodies return. Thus, in the drawings created for Darkness Visible, Gallardo’s women are one with the landscape, their arms becoming mangroves, their community a mountain skyline. In the artist’s words, “[as] I draw them, the charcoal dictates what I cannot forget, it dictates how to construct the landscape.” 2 These drawings are also reminiscent of the violent times of the dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) when women were raped, kidnapped and tortured, and treated as sex slaves by the military.
1
2 Ana Gallardo in conversation with Victoria Noorthoorn, April 4, 2026, Buenos Aires.
Interview with Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, in Ana Gallardo: Un lugar para vivir cuando seamos viejos. (Buenos Aires: Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015), p. 34.
Courtesy of the artist and Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte
EDUARDO BASUALDO
(BUENOS AIRES, 1977)
Eduardo Basualdo was born in the winter of 1977, at the height of the military dictatorship’s brutal repression. This climate of sometimes ostensible, sometimes insidious threat, intertwined with the primordial fears rooted in childhood, could have left a mark on his work, populated by hidden presences and uncontrollable forces. In this work, Basualdo employs black foil to sculpt a group of living figures in flight. By shaping it directly, pressed and moulded, onto the bodies, the material registers their movement and gestures before the bodies are withdrawn, leaving a hollowed shell behind. At once light and resistant, fragile yet capable of preserving form, the sculpture rises as a tense boundary between presence and absence, representation and loss. The figures remain suspended in a condition of unstable balance, their forms held between formation and collapse. Do they mark the emergence of a community, or the trace of its disappearance? Are these the ruins of a recent tragedy, or the early stirrings of a nascent reanimation?
A
TENSE BOUNDARY BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE, REPRESENTATION AND LOSS.
Sketch of the project for Venice, 2026
Chalk pastel on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte
Pupila [Pupil] installation view, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2023
CADÁVERES
Bajo las matas
En los pajonales
Sobre los puentes
En los canales
Hay Cadáveres
En la trilla de un tren que nunca se detiene
En la estela de un barco que naufraga
En una olilla, que se desvanece
En los muelles los apeaderos los trampolines los malecones
Hay Cadáveres
En las redes de los pescadores
En el tropiezo de los cangrejales
En la del pelo que se toma
Con un prendedorcito descolgado
Hay Cadáveres
En lo preciso de esta ausencia
En lo que raya esa palabra
En su divina presencia
Comandante, en su raya
Hay Cadáveres
[...]
CORPSES
Beneath bushes
In scrub
On bridges
In canals
There are Corpses
In the track of a train that never stops
In the wake of a ship that sinks
In a ripple that vanishes
On quaysides railway halts trampolines piers
There are Corpses
In fishermen’s nets
In stumbling in crabswamps
In she whose hair is pulled
With hairclasp hanging undone
There are Corpses
In the necessity for this absence
In what underlines that speech
In your godly presence
Commander, in your line
There are Corpses
NÉSTOR PERLONGHER
From Buenos Aires to São Paulo, 1981
Fragment of a poem published for the first time in Revista (de poesía), No 1, April, 1984
Translation by William Rowe
Published in Néstor Perlongher (1992). “Corpses”, Travesia, 1:2, 185-198, DOI: 10.1080/13569329209361794
CREDITS
Curated by: Victoria Noorthoorn, Director, and Patricio Orellana, Head of the Curatorial Department, of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, in collaboration with Augusto Maurandi, Creative Director of Spazio Punch.
An exhibition developed by the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, a public institution dependent on the Ministry of Culture of the Buenos Aires City Government, as per the initiative of Spazio Punch, Venice, with the support of Museo Moderno’s Friends Association, and sponsored by Adcap Grupo Financiero. The exhibition counts, as well, with the generous support of the galleries Barro/ Arte Contemporáneo, Kurimanzutto, Ruth Benzacar - Galeria de Arte and Rolf Art.
EXHIBITION & PUBLICATION CREDITS:
Direction: Victoria Noorthoorn, Director
Curatorial Team: Patricio Orellana, Head of the Curatorial Department
Nicolás Cuello, Curator
Fernando García, Curator of Public Programs
Claudio Iglesias, Research Associate
Florencia Morel, Curatorial Assistant
General Coordination:
Exhibition Coordination:
Florencia Rugiero, Institutional Coordination
Agustina Vizcarra, Head of Exhibitions
Noelia Magnelli, Exhibitions Coordinator
Paula Pellejero, Registrar
Exhibition Design: Iván Rösler, Head of Exhibition Design and Production
Exhibition Graphic Design: Juan Desteract, Graphic Designer
Exhibition Communications: Gabriela Giles, Head of Communications
Carolina Alvariño, Communications Coordinator
Verónica Padilla, Press
Exhibition and Publication Editorial Team: Gabriela Comte, General Editor
Soledad Sobrino, Editorial Coordinator
Martín Lojo, Editor
Julia Benseñor, Copy Editor and Spanish Translator
Ian Barnett, Leslie Robertson and Daniel Tunnard, English Translators
Néstor Dante Saporiti, Italian Translator
Pablo Alarcón, Graphic Designer
Matías Schilman, Graphic Assistant
Guillermo Miguens, Colorimetry
Development: Verónica Vassallo, Head of Development
Finance & Administration:
Natalia Minini, Head of Finance and Vicente Sposaro, Head of Public Administration
PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS OF THIS PUBLICATION
pp. 4-5: Courtesy of Fundación
Augusto y León Ferrari Arte y Acervo (FALFAA) and Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS)
p. 7 (right)- Courtesy of Marcelo Brodsky and Rolf Art gallery
pp. 8-9: Courtesy of Marta Minujín Archive and Kurimanzutto gallery
p. 11 (im. 3, 4): Courtesy of Nicanor Aráoz
p. 11 (im. 1, 2, 5, 6): Bruno Dubner, courtesy of Barro Arte Contemporáneo
pp. 12-13: Martín Touzon
p. 15: Marcos López, Courtesy of Liliana Maresca’s Estate, Marcos López and Rolf Art gallery
Creative Director & Curator: Augusto Maurandi
Vibe Researcher & Public Programs: Alessia Prati
Project Coordinator: Alice Ambrosetti
Exhibition Installation: Emanuele Argentieri
Web Design & Production: Hstudio
Founded in 2011 on the island Giudecca in Venice, Spazio Punch is a non-profit cultural platform dedicated to exploring the intersection between art, fashion, architecture, design and contemporary culture. Located in the industrial spaces once occupied by the Dreher Brewery, Spazio Punch takes an entirely unique, radically experimental approach. Under the leadership of Augusto Maurandi, the programme is known for its hybrid approach, straddling the institutional and the independent spheres. Spazio Punch’s curatorial research prioritizes a focus on materiality, performance and the relationship with the urban context, promoting projects that combine art, fashion, sound and editorial practices. The projects often favour collaborative formats that redefine the boundaries between exhibiting, inhabiting and experimenting.
Noorthoorn, Victoria Darkness Visible: The Long Shadow of Dictatorship / Victoria Noorthoorn; Contribuciones de Patricio Orellana, Nicolás Cuello, Fernando García y Claudio Iglesias;- 1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Secretaría Cultura GCBA. Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2026. Libro digital, Otros Archivo Digital: online ISBN 978-987-22339-3-8
1. Arte. 2. Arte Argentino. 3. Arte Moderno. I. Cuello, Nicolás, colab. II. Sobrino, Soledad, coord. III. Lojo, Martín, ed. IV. Título. CDD 700
p. 16 (right): Pompi Gutnisky
p. 17 (left): Pompi Gutnisky
p. 18: Fernanda Acosta
p. 19 (top) Josefina Tomassi
p. 19 (bottom): Eduardo Basualdo
THE SELECTION OF WORKS BROUGHT TOGETHER UNDER THE EXHIBITION DARKNESS VISIBLE: THE LONG SHADOW OF DICTATORSHIP ARISE OUT OF A SUSTAINED CURATORIAL CONVERSATION THAT LONG PREDATES THE PROJECT. IT DRAWS ON ARTISTS STUDIED, EXHIBITED, COLLECTED AND ACCOMPANIED BY THE MUSEO MODERNO FOR MANY YEARS – ARTISTS WHO HAVE SHAPED SOME OF ITS MOST DEFINING AND VIBRANT EXHIBITIONS. AS OUR INSTITUTION PREPARED FOR ITS 70TH ANNIVERSARY IN 2026, THIS CONTINUITY OPENED UP A SPACE FOR THE MUSEUM TO LOOK BACK ON ITS OWN HISTORY AND TRACE THE AESTHETIC STRATEGIES VITAL TO SUSTAINING CREATIVE IMAGINATION AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AS FORCES CENTRAL TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. ROOTED IN THE MODERNO’S ENGAGEMENT WITH HISTORY AND MEMORY, THE EXHIBITION FOREGROUNDS THEIR URGENT AND ONGOING RELEVANCE IN THE PRESENT.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
La donación León Ferrari [The León Ferrari Donation], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 8/11/2014 - 9/8/2015. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn and Alejandra Aguado.
La menesunda según Marta Minujin [La Menesunda: According to Marta Minujín], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 15/10/2015 - 22/5/2016. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn. With subsequent tours in Copenhagen Contemporary (Dinamarca), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain) and Tate Liverpool (United Kingdom).
Ana Gallardo: Un lugar para vivir cuando seamos viejos [Ana Gallardo: A Place to Live When We Get Old], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 28/11/2015 - 4/4/2016. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn.
Liliana Maresca: El ojo avizor. Obras 1982-1994 [Liliana Maresca: The Keen Eye. Works 19821994], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 7/10/2017- 5/11/2017. Curated by Javier Villa.
Archivo Aldo Sessa 1958-2018: Sesenta años de imágenes [Aldo Sessa Archive 1958–2018: Sixty Years of Images], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 31/3/2018 - 27/5/2018. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn
Flavia Da Rin: ¿Quién es esa chica? [Flavia Da Rin: Who´s that girl?], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 27/5/2019 - 29/9/2019. Curated by Laura Hakel.
Sergio De Loof: ¿Sentiste hablar de mí? [Sergio De Loof: Never Heard of Me?], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 28/11/201922/2/2021. Curated by Lucrecia Palacios.
Nicanor Aráoz: Sueño sólido [Nicanor Aráoz: Solid Sleep], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 30/10/2020 - 31/7/2021. Curated by Lucrecia Palacios.
Eduardo Basualdo: Pupila [Eduardo Basualdo: Pupil], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 25/6/2022 - 12/11/2023. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn.
Marta Minujin: Autorretrato mediático [Marta Minujín: Media Self- Portrait], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 16/7/202219/3/2023. Curated by Museo Moderno´s team.
Ana Gallardo: Materiales para la memoria [Ana Gallardo: Materials for Memory], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, to be opened in April 2026. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn.
Luis Camnitzer: Todo por aprender [Luis Camnitzer: Everything to learn], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, to be opened in August 2026. Curated by Alfredo Aracil.
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
Argentina lisérgica. Visiones psicodélicas en la colección del Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires [Psychedelic Argentina: Psychedelic Visions in the MAMBA Collection], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 12/10/2013 - 7/6/2015. Curated by Rafael Cippolini. Included artworks by Marta Minujín among other artists.
Performatón. Palabras. Objetos. Esoterismo. Escena [Performathon. Words. Objects. The Esoteric. Stage], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 22/1/2014 - 30/3/2014. Curated by Museo Moderno´s team. Included artworks by Nicanor Aráoz, Sergio De Loof and Marta Minujín, among other artists.
Los vencedores y los vencidos. Marcas de la violencia en la Colección del Museo de Arte Moderno. [Winners and Losers.The Scars of Violence in the Collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 8/2/2014 - 27/6/2014. Curated by Ana María Battistozzi. Included artworks by León Ferrari and Guillermo Kuitca, among other artists. El círculo caminaba tranquilo.Una exposición de obras en papel de la colección Deutsche Bank en
diálogo con obras del Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires [The Circle Walked Casually], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 19/9/2014 -18/1/2015. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn. Included artworks by León Ferrari, Guillermo Kuitca and Marta Minujín, among other artists.
El teatro de la pintura: artistas argentinos en diálogo con Sonia Delaunay [The Theatre of Painting: Argentine Artists in Dialogue with Sonia Delaunay], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 8/11/2014 - 22/2/2015. Curated by Jimena Ferreiro. Included artworks by Flavia Da Rin among other artists.
Empujar un ismo [Driving an Ism], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 8/11/201429/3/2015. Curated by Javier Villa. Included artworks by Flavia Da Rin among other artists.
La paradoja en el centro: ritmos de la materia en el arte argentino de los años 60 [The Paradox at the Centre: Rhythms in the Themes of Argentine Art of the 60s], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 14/8/2015- 1/1/2017. Curated by Javier Villa. Included artworks by Marta Minujín among other artists.
Excéntricos y superilustrados [Eccentrics and Ultra-Enlightened] Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 3/7/2016 - 23/10/2016. Curated by Sofía Dourron, Laura Hakel and Javier Villa. Included artworks by Sergio De Loof, León Ferrari, Liliana Maresca and Luis Pazos, among other artists.
Historia de dos mundos. Arte experimental latinoamericano en diálogo con la colección MMK, 1944-1989 [A Tale of Two Worlds], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2/7/2018 - 14/10/2018. Included artworks by Luis Camnitzer, León Ferrari, Eduardo Gil, Liliana Maresca, Marta Minujín, Luis Pazos and Aldo Sessa, among other artists.
El límite [The Limit], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 8/4/2022 - 14/5/2023. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn, Javier Villa, Marcos Krämer and Violeta González Santos. Included artworks by Ana Gallardo, Aldo Sessa, León Ferrari, Nicanor Aráoz, among other artists.
Cuerpos contacto [Contact Bodies], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 20/5/20229/4/2023. Curated by Francisco Lemus, Marcos
Krämer, Clarisa Appendino and Violeta González Santos. Included artworks by Sergio De Loof and La Organización Negra, among other artists.
A 18 minutos del Sol. Un recorrido por el Cosmos a través del arte moderno y contemporáneo argentino. 1900-2023 [18 Minutes from the Sun: A Journey around the Cosmos through Modern and Contemporary Art. 1900-2023], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 3/6/2023 - 25/2/2024. Curated by Javier Villa and Marcos Krämer. Included artworks by Liliana Maresca and Aldo Sessa, among other artists.
Cien caminos en un solo día. Distopías urbanas post-2001. [A Hundred Roads in a Single Day: Urban Dystopias Post-2001], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 6/7/2023 - 26/5/2024. Curated by Jimena Ferreiro. Included artworks by Nicanor Aráoz among other artists.
Cultura colibrí. Arte e identidad en el under de los años 80 y 90 [Hummingbird Culture: Art and Identity in the 1980s and 1990s Underground Scene], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 26/8/20233/3/2024. Curated by Jimena Ferreiro. Included artworks by Sergio De Loof, Guillermo Kuitca, el Archivo de la Memoria Trans, Ana Gallardo, Marta Minujin and the Archivo de la Memoria Trans, among other artists.
Juguetes rabiosos. Vanguardia y destrucción en el arte argentino de los años 60. [Mad Toys. The Avant-garde and Destruction in Argentine Art of the 1960s], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 26/8/2023 - 3/3/2024. Curated by Patricio Orellana. Included artworks by León Ferrari and Marta Minujín, among other artists.
El aprendizaje infinito [Endless Learning], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 13/6/2024 - 4/3/2025. Curated by Jimena Ferreiro and Alfredo Aracil. Included artworks by Guillermo Kuitca among other artists.
Moderno y MetaModerno [Moderno & MetaModerno], Museo de Arte Moderno
de Buenos Aires, 27/4/2024 - 1/8/2025. Curated by Francisco Lemus and Victoria Noorthoorn. Included artworks of the Museo Moderno´s collection by Nicanor Aráoz, Flavia Da Rin, Sergio De Loof, León Ferrari, Ana Gallardo, Eduardo Gil, Liliana Maresca, Marta Minujín, Luis Pazos and Aldo Sessa, among other artists.
Dibujar es crear mundos [Drawing to Create Worlds], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 27/6/2024 - 9/3/2025. Curated by Raúl Flores. Included artworks of Nicanor Aráoz among other artists.
Esto es teatro: Once escenas experimentales del Di Tella al Parakultural [This Is Theatre: Eleven Experimental Scenes from the Di Tella to the Parakultural], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 29/5/2025 - 10/5/2026. Curated by Andrés Gallina, Florencia Qualina and Alejandro Tantanian. Included artworks by Gianni Mestichelli and La Organización Negra, among other artists.
Moderno y MetaModerno. Edición 70 Aniversario [Moderno & MetaModerno: 70th Anniversary Edition], Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, opened on 18/4/2026. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn and the Museo Moderno´s team. Includes artworks of the Museo Moderno´s collection by Nicanor Aráoz, Flavia Da Rin, Sergio De Loof, León Ferrari, Ana Gallardo, Guillermo Kuitca, Liliana Maresca, Marta Minujín, Luis Pazos and Aldo Sessa, among other artists.
La memoria de la Colección: El Moderno en el Parque [The Collection Remembers: The Museo Moderno at Parque de la Memoria], organised between the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires and Parque de la Memoria – Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado, to open on June 2026. Curated by Nicolás Cuello and Cecilia Nisembaum. It will include artworks of the Museo Moderno´s collection by Marcelo Brodsky, León Ferrari and Marta Minujín, among other artists.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FERRARI, León, Cuadro escrito, facsimile edition, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015 [1984].
FERRARI, León, Imagens, facsimile edition, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015 [1988/89]
FERRARI, León, Parahereges, facsimile edition, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015 [1986]
BATTISTOZZI, Ana María, Los vencedores y los vencidos. Marcas de violencia en la colección del Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015. SpanishEnglish bilingual edition.
AGUADO, Alejandra, GALLARDO, Ana and CABEZÓN CÁMARA, Gabriela, Ana Gallardo: Un lugar para vivir cuando seamos viejos, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015. SpanishEnglish bilingual edition.
DOURRON, Sofía, RÖSLER , Iván, et al., La Menesunda según Marta Minujín, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2015. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
CIPPOLINI, Rafael, Argentina lisérgica: Visiones psicodélicas en la colección del Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2016. SpanishEnglish bilingual edition.
GAINZA, María, HAKEL, Laura and VILLA, Javier, Liliana Maresca, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2016. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
NOORTHOORN, Victoria, Archivo Aldo Sessa 1958-2018: Sesenta años de imágenes, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2018. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
MONTGOMERY, Harper, NOORTHOORN, Victoria, VILLA, Javier, et al., Historia de dos mundos/ A Tale of Two Worlds. Arte experimental latinoamericano en diálogo con la colección MMK, 1944-1989, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2018. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
AISENBERG, Diana, KUITCA, Guillermo, et al., Flavia Da Rin: ¿Quién es esa chica?, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2019. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
AGUADO, Alejandra, DIEZ FISCHER, Agustín, et al., León Ferrari: Donación al Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires / 2014, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2020. Spanish edition.
PALACIOS, Lucrecia, et al., Sergio De Loof: ¿Sentiste hablar de mí?, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2021. SpanishEnglish bilingual edition.
PALACIOS, Lucrecia and PONCE DE LEÓN, Alejo, Nicanor Aráoz: Sueño sólido, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2021. SpanishEnglish bilingual edition.
GAMERRO, Carlos, MAURETTE, Pablo, SPERANZA, GRACIELA, et al., Eduardo Basualdo: Pupila, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2023. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
NOORTHOORN, Victoria, El arte, ese río interminable, Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2023. Spanish - English bilingual edition.
MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO DE BUENOS AIRES
Mission Statement
The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires – a public museum dependent from the Ministry of Culture of the Buenos Aires City Government – aspires to be a beacon for Argentinian modern and contemporary art, both nationally and internationally, by promoting artistic creation and imaginative development, encouraging constant research and the experimental attitude of Argentinian artists, and supporting the production of works, exhibitions and publications, and the dissemination of ideas and professional training. The Museo Moderno preserves the largest public collection of Argentinian Modern and Contemporary Art and seeks to grow as a dynamic, flexible, permeable museum that promotes listening and constant horizontal dialogue with society and multiplies the links between art and education to foster a culture of belonging.
The Museo Moderno stands in and from the South as an inclusive, federal, accessible, caring space that shoulders the responsibility of encouraging artistic thought with and within a vibrant and extensive art community. The Museo Moderno sees art as a vehicle for discovery, knowledge, understanding and healing in kindred dialogue with artists and their diverse audiences.
The Museo Moderno was founded in 1956 by Rafael Squirru, who imagined a museum in constant motion, capable of navigating the most challenging waters aboard the good ship Yapeyú, on which the Museum launched its first exhibition of Argentinian artists, reaching twenty-two ports around the world. This image of a museum on the move – intrepid, steeped in the climate of the now and determined to steer a course of uncertainty and challenge, but also of future discovery – is the museum that inspires, strengthens and propels us towards the future.
The contemporary artist seeks to build a place in the world through their art and has the courage to imagine a better world, for themself and for future generations. This constructive thinking and understanding of the past, this grasp of the complexity of the present and building of hope towards the future is what guides this Modern Museum on its path to sustainability, equity and inclusion while strengthening freedom of expression and imaginative development, fundamental drivers for human development.
