Pictorial archive of the Argentine artist GALA BERGER

To access the Crisis Gallery exhibition room you must cross a large hand-dyed fabric, on which images from both marine and terrestrial flora and fauna have been arranged in appliqués. Thus begins the journey through the 145 reversions that the Argentine artist Gala Berger (Villa Gesell, 1983) has worked, using various techniques and supports, on the watercolors that make up Trujillo del Perú (Códice Trujillo), a pictorial archive from the 18th century that portrays the customs and daily life of the Viceroyalty of Peru.

About agencies, anonymities, appropriations, extractions and subversions, we met to talk with Gala, regarding this individual exhibition in Lima, which is titled The Invisible Uncle.

Luisa Fernanda Lindo: I am very curious about the title of the exhibition. I have a suspicion that it is related to anonymity, considering that the works you work with lack authorship. What or who are you referring to with 'the invisible guy'?

Gala Berger: The idea of the title is multiple. On the one hand, it comes from my friend Metsá Rama and her family history. Her grandfather was an important Meraya Shipibo and, for a time, he lived in the jungle where she had a family with the owners of the plants and animals. Hence, Metsá today has an invisible uncle who accompanies her and protects her from her.

Fascinated by this idea, I compared it with my own family life and its differences: my grandfather had another family before meeting my grandmother, from that union I have an uncle who has been absent for much of my life (in another country, with another language) and who is now an older person, and apparently we have not been able to find that bridge that connects us in some way and thus we also remain invisible to each other.

And, in the end, as you say, it can also be related to the idea of a lost genealogy, of anonymous artists and of a heritage that has escaped the eyes of those who can be reflected in their images.

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Pictorial archive of the Argentine artist GALA BERGER