THE WANDERING LANDSCAPE
By Carla Barbero
Meandering roots search about, twisted. If this is what happens to the trees, what about the souls? Sara Gallardo, La rosa en el viento [The Rose in the Wind]1
The moment we look up and cast our eyes about to observe the landscape, the image that appears before us represents that intimate alliance between language and what is seen. It is a relationship that is always personal and over the years, it becomes part of our stories, colours and hopes. The image travels with us, is our company in the stillness and a challenge when it changes, mysteriously. It takes hold slowly, and grows while finding a foothold. The landscape is that close encounter between our view of the environment and the questions that trouble us; it is an experience common to all. Between the muddied waters of time immemorial and kilometres of murmuring banks, the rivers organise their tributaries in a manner similar to how this exhibition brings together the visions of these three important Argentinian women artists, who contribute to an expansion of local imagination with fantasy, social history and nature. The works of Adriana Bustos (Bahía Blanca, 1965), Claudia del Río (Rosario, 1957) and Mónica Millán (San Ignacio, Misiones, 1960) unfold in a space that is free of any sense of urgency. Paisaje peregrino [The Wandering Landscape] is an exhibition that brings together the poetics of the artists, which are strongly connected to the environments where they have lived: the alchemical presence of the Paraná River that envelops the life and work of Del Río; the variegated Guarani jungle that expands beyond the political boundaries of the Argentinian littoral, where Millán finds the source of her mysteries; and the tension with our colonial heritage, which is a central theme for Bustos
Sara Gallardo, La rosa en el viento, Buenos Aires, Fiordo, 2020. There is no English translation available.
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