A selection of Argentine artists by the sea

Andrés Duprat explains the third rotation of the exhibition he curated with the Italian Diego Sileo in Milan, which brings together 22 Argentine artists who are renowned at the MAR Museum.

Some 22 Argentine artists renowned on the international scene exploring the diversity of views and expressions of the culture of a country that in the past was the destination of large European migrations are the ones who participate in What the night tells the day, an exhibition conceived by the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC) in Milan and curated jointly by Andrés Duprat, director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, and the Italian Diego Sileo, from the PAC.

Inaugurated in Milan, with a second stay at Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires, the exhibition has a third rotation at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Province of Buenos Aires (MAR), in the city of Mar del Plata, and during the summer season, bringing to a much wider audience a set of personal poetics “that demonstrate the ability of artists to observe and analyze society from critical, intimate and original approaches.” It is a set of photographs, installations, sculptures, videos and performances.
“The origin was in Milan at the end of 2023; before the pandemic we worked together with PAC, a very prestigious public organization in the Italian city,” Andrés Duprat told Ñ about the drift of the project. “As part of his purposes, Diego Sileo, with some experience in Latin American art, created a program that has been going on for several years where he invites a curator from a country to co-curate an exhibition adding two perspectives, always with a theme. For Argentina, the social and political aspect of artists from the contemporary scene was chosen, read from a perspective of social criticism. Proa joined immediately and was an important support. In Milan it was a success, some artists were able to travel, a large catalogue was made and it opened in October 2023 until February 2024, when it moved to Proa.”

Each space invaded by the works had different modalities. Partly because when it was presented in Milan there was work by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Juan Sorrentino or Eduardo Basualdo, who made work especially or had it nearby because they were in a residency. Duprat elaborates: “They all have a consistent body of work, with a recognizable image, and it seemed to us that, although they are different poetics, each one has the necessary forcefulness to show an absolutely powerful panorama of Argentine art. We did not choose very new or very young artists, but rather we turned to the intermediate generation with an important work behind them.”
At the MAR it occupies two large rooms; The version designed for this museum opens with Nosotros no supieras (We Didn’t Know) (1976-2007), by León Ferrari, a collection of press clippings detailing the context of bodies found on the riverbank or executions in the street. This institutional violence continues in another very different representation in Ana Gallardo’s piece, Retén (2018), where the black plane barely allows one to read a phrase at the bottom, like a soft whisper, “They searched our sexes.” The photo-performance “Cristo 63” by Alberto Greco, the poster where Liliana Maresca “offers herself any destiny” has the same imprint of criticism about the saint and the sinner. From the same period is La cabalgata, a performance performed live by Marta Minujín on Channel 7 television in 1964, during the famous and massive program La campana de cristal.

There is a link between Cristina Piffer and Graciela Sacco in the way those who cannot eat are stripped of their rights: Boca-Nada, a play on words for Bocanada, an installation that is displayed here with a layout on a plan that orders the room. Piffer, for her part, takes 19th century banknotes and prints them on glass with dried cow's blood that, over time, slowly comes off.
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