Mariana Telleria

Rufino, Santa Fe, 1979

In November 2019, Mariana Telleria posted on Instagram images of a TV screen showing a ranking of beliefs. It appears that, from 2008 to 2019, belief in astrology grew over seven points and in energy over ten points, while belief in God, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and the saints had fallen considerably. One artist who saw the post wrote her a message: “Astrology and the Devil rose together. Long live the witches!” Another wrote, “I am going to start working for elfology.”

In her work, Telleria reveals, subverts, and transforms reality in unsuspected ways. She describes her practice as the inevitable act of seeking, inferring, and finding forms within other forms or a story hidden amidst things. Regarding the work on exhibit here, she states, “Performing geometric operations on any surface whatsoever, which I tend to do, is an exercise intuitive at times and, at others, Cartesian in its rationalism. My interest lies more in jokes than in truths.”

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Untitled. From the series “God Believes in Me", 2012 Courtesy of the artist and Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte

Ana Vogelfang Buenos Aires, 1982

For the Jewish people, shoes perform a number of symbolic functions. After a death, mourners must remain in stocking feet or at least avoid leather shoes. Wearing the shoes of the dead is forbidden.

There are different interpretation of why, and artist Ana Vogelfang offers one: “A section of the Talmud on the interpretation of dreams says that dreaming about a dead person who returns to take off your shoes is a bad omen: Your time has come. Since we dream at night what we think during the day, if we don’t want to create our own death sentence, we should not wear the shoes of someone who has died. Because if there is one thing our dead are capable of, it is spying on dreams. If they see us walking around in their shoes, they might get the idea of coming back for them, and so they could take us—shoes and all—over to the other side!”

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Unto a Land that I Will Show Thee I y II, 2018

The artist’s collection