Light and Power

by Lara Marmor

Luz y Fuerza (Light and Power) is the name of the union of electrical-energy workers in Argentina as well as of this exhibition that brings together the work of artists who explore the terrain of spirituality in a context marked by uncertainty. Perhaps a symptom of deeper phenomena or perhaps just part of a constellation that surrounds us, bioenergy and coaching have largely replaced psychoanalysis, tofu has gained ground against steak as a dietary staple, and yoga holds its own against calisthenics. Bestseller lists are brimming not only with self-help books but also exhaustive handbooks on the curative powers of magic mushrooms and astrology. Shamans, gurus, and social scientists urge us to recognize and adore Gaia and the Pachamama. How does the set of overlapping beliefs, practices, and often ancestral knowledges that make up the ungraspable substance we might call contemporary spirituality impact on and constitute us? That question is what drives this exploration of artistic practice in a new millennium when ancient Asian and Native American worldviews, meditation, holistic therapies, esotericism, homeopathy, neoshamanism, astrology, and Buddhism form the eclectic and sometimes contradictory fabric in which we live.

In Argentina, the advent of New Age came with the counterculture. It gained ground in the nineteen-nineties to the tunes of Irish singer Enya only to take off in the aughts. New habits tied to discourses that celebrate self-awareness, a healthy lifestyle, and positivity paved the way for a freer experience of desire and pleasure in stark contrast with the guilt, sin, and sacrifice that weigh down Western religious traditions. Personal and social transformation, which pivots between neoliberal individualism and community activism, was now center stage.

Artists born in the nineteen-seventies and through the late eighties are at the core of this exhibition. They are the ones who came onto the art scene in the early aughts. They grew up in the interval between the end of the dictatorship in 1983 and the fervor in its wake with the election of Raúl Alfonsín. Children on freedom, they experienced the bubble of convertibility when the peso was pegged to the dollar under President Carlos Menem. They hum along to Charly García’s album Parte de la religión (1987) and listen to Babasónicos, a band whose name is an unlikely combination of the words Los Supersónicos (the name of The Jetsons cartoon in Spanish) and the Hindu guru Sai Baba. These artists are heirs to the legacy of the Tao del Arte, a 1997 exhibition curated by Jorge Gumier Maier and held at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. In his curatorial text, Maier looked to Osho and The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra to sum up the aesthetic paradigm of the period. But the artists of the aughts were also marked by the economic, social, and political upheaval that shook Argentina in 2001. It would become a key to reading what was happening in the terrain of art. At that juncture, it has been pointed out, artists left behind the cloisters of their studios; they took to the street and started working with what they found there as they opened and ran their own spaces. They gradually left amateurism behind to enter the legions of professional artists. As young people, they experienced the heights of a type of spirituality that appeared, at first, to be alternative. Together, the works in this exhibition interrogate how we are impacted by the crises that, in Argentina, we are so accustomed to but also how, on a global level, socio-environmental collapse has given rise to new forms of activism, like ecofeminism and veganism, and new philosophical turns like plantism. All of that in a context that has, for decades, given off desperate signals of the systemic breakdown of existing political and economic models, as evidenced by phenomena like climate change, the crisis of democracy, and the rise of the new right.

Open to experimentation, the works on exhibit break with the man/nature, rationality/spirituality, body/mind binaries. By means of humor, irony, and the search for a deeper spirituality, they attest to the fact that transformative energy and power are crucial at these times of change.

Diego Bianchi Buenos Aires, 1969

Diego Bianchi engages often clashing variables: sequences of control and lack of control; individual spiritual exercise and its correlate in ruin and social fragmentation; a mannequin’s rigid body and the flexible body of yoga; and going through pain to reach a state of wellbeing. The invitation to Bianchi’s 2010 solo show Ejercicios espirituales featured an image of Sadhu Baba Bharti. For decades, he held his right arm in the air as sign of devotion and for the sake of world peace. Eventually, it became an inert form attached to his body. In that show, pieces of dozens of mannequins and other objects were scattered throughout the gallery. (The work on exhibit here was featured in Ejercicios espirituales.)

The many queries that impelled Bianchi to make those works include whether inner alignment and mystical transcendence are possible in a world that is falling to pieces, and what relationship there is between individual spirituality and the reigning global imbalance.

Diego Bianchi Vadaconasana, 2010

Alejandro Ikonicoff Collection

Paula Castro Buenos Aires, 1978

Paula Castro’s method is characterized by binding manual work and reflection, that is, by combining craft and conceptual procedures. She is interested in the copy and the reproduction. She likes it when everything gets muddled and unsettled, when everything is deformed.

The work on exhibit here is from the series Circulo cromático de marcadores negros [Color Wheel of Black Markers]. In it, the artist uses different types of markers to create her own palette of blacks. Steeped in the discourse of positivity, Castro assembles thumbs-up icons to shape the figure of a human body; the pupils of its eyes are the smiley emoji. There is a dangerous resonance to the aspiration of happiness in the context of an order that offers most of us only dearth, scarcity, and toil, wrote Marcuse.

“Todo re bien, ok [Everything Super, OK] could easily have been called Bienvenidas angustia y ansiedad [Welcome to Angst and Anxiety]” explains the artist. In the end, optimism won out. That does not mean, though, that happiness is not understood as a common disciplinary measure or imperative.

Paula Castro Everything Super, OK, 2018 The artist’s collection

Laura Códega Buenos Aires, 1977

Eager to build her own theory of being on the basis of a sense of religiosity that forms part of her daily life, Laura Códega acknowledges that she has always been drawn to that which lies outside widespread Western culture. “It is possible to believe in so many things in Argentina because we have such a wide system of beliefs… I have always been very curious,” explains the artist. She adds with a laugh, “It must be because Pisces is my rising sign.”

La fuente de los deseos [Wishing Fountain] was created in 2012—the year that, according to the Mayan calendar, the world would come to an end. A request is made of each figure (Monkey, Lion, Baby, and Alien), but first each one’s sphere must be understood. The fountain is activated by spirits drinks: If filled with wine, its interior turns black like the unconscious or providence. The bottles are manifested spirits. When ancient Arab alchemists discovered the process of distillation, they understood that substances exposed to fire release a spirit—they called it al-kuhul—that is transformed into a drink.

Eager to materialize visions, Códega—whose studio in Buenos Aires is located in what was once a spiritualist church—tries to give shape to the spirit that, like a genie, corresponds to each of these bottles.

Laura Códega Manosanta, 2022 The artist’s collection