The Wandering Landscape por Carla Barbero

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

1 Sara Gallardo, La rosa en el viento, Buenos Aires, Fiordo, 2020. There is no English translation available.

because of her upbringing in Córdoba province, where the presence of the Jesuits continues to resonate. The practices of the three artists transcend the contemplation of their surroundings to advance emotional and political interactions while, at the same time, they rewrite history and muddle the laws of time. Their works also encompass collective experiences of fieldwork and experimental pedagogy, practices that propose to emancipate traditional knowledge in favour of shared knowledge. The exhibition includes works made over the past thirty years as well as recent pieces created specifically for the show. There are drawings, paintings, textiles, sculptures and videos that coexist in a gallery where, from a large open space at its centre, the viewer is offered a panoramic perspective to delve into the memories of each of the three artists. From there, the exhibition opens up to references to the natural world, the relationship between territory and bodies, and the spiritual qualities of artistic works. In this exhibition, the landscape mutates from a generous visual repertoire of colours and forms to natural resources subjected to stress by extractive forces, all while passing through a captivating fantasy atmosphere. In the work of these artists, landscape is weighted with a considerable alchemical power.

Southern Cross “To what extent can a landscape be said to be local?” asked Sergio Raimondi, a poet from Buenos Aires, at a conference in the spring of 2021.2 There is an exponential power in the landscape that oscillates between being an intimate visual and emotional reference, and one that is shared by a community. That is, one that can have a sense of the closeness of a family and, at once, be foreign. This exhibition resides in that duality. The local becomes a question that seeks to expand boundaries, like the roots of the tree that seek out water in the mud.

The journey through Paisaje peregrino begins at the centre of the gallery, a meeting point where a circle of benches evokes a square, a workshop, a classroom, an assembly. There, the variegated plants of a large drawing by Millán stretch like laborious strokes given over to a suspension of time. Her work, Paisaje [Landscape] (2009-2010),3 is a scene with animals in which the dense air of the jungle contributes to the simultaneity of the planes: there is no depth, no view into the distance, no background, no figure; everything is part of the same unstable and vaporous balance. The dividing line between the naturalistic and the fantastic vision is blurred;

2 “Derivas del paisaje. La mirada de las ranas” [“Adrift in the Landscape. The Gaze of Frogs”], lecture by Sergio Raimondi and Leticia Obeid at the Centro Cultural España, Córdoba, 2021. 3 See pages 146 and 147.

the charcoal alone, as it travels across the canvas, reveals a cartographic intention. Bustos’ maps – a series of works the artist has been producing for more than fifteen years – lie somewhere between cartography and invention, with their overlapping of social and economic history with magical thinking. Imago Mundi XI: Wheel Map (2012),4 for example, is a painting and a laboratory in which a new science is being created. In them, Bustos works in a speculative manner with language to create a triad of science, magic and psychoanalysis through which she proposes to rewrite canonical narratives to alter our heritages. She invents new worlds from ingredients of a diverse provenance, in an incantation that does not avoid wrongdoings, but questions them. Meanwhile, in the monumental work, Imago Mundi V: Goldsilver Map (2014),5 the Río de la Plata is transformed into the gravitational axis of a planisphere. The work references the first cosmographic books, dating from 1410, though the artist not only creates a new representation of the territory but also maps historical events, such as those that gave rise to the creation of the Argentinian nation-state, and positions the river as the central source of historical powers. How can such power be denied?

And the encounter grows with the indomitable poetic drive of Claudia del Rio. In this area of the exhibition, we find her drawings of humanised maize, a repertoire of characters made of kernels and husks, stripped of innocence, the colonial history of the continent.6 Each ear of maize, whether it appears with a ranch in the background, carries a symbol, or is part of a romantic scene, is shown perched on the coastal horizon of the Argentinian littoral. It is a stellar cast, in which these ears of corn turned into characters are born of a minimal natural and historical unity, which displays the artist’s ability to objectify a symbol, although she does so with emotion and humour.

Wanderers The exhibition moves into a second sector, where Millán’s colourful embroidered textile welcomes the visitor with a verse that reads, “Soy un pájaro muy salvaje y me gusta la libertad” [“I am a very wild bird and I love freedom”]; this is also the name of the work,7 a piece the artist made especially for this occasion. In the work,

4 See page 45. 5 See pages 36 and 37. 6 See pages 89, 91 and 93. 7 See page 151.

the landscape is presented as an extensive repertoire of colours and shapes that function as a stage for experimentation. It could be said that all of the artist’s works manifest a certain economy of colour, a rational organisation that begins with the selection of fabric scrap and extends to the reuse of materials, the hand-dyeing and the rhythm of the gradient. Linked to both the geometric tradition of Argentinian abstract art and to popular Guaraní craftsmanship, Millán’s exuberant textiles recreate the atmosphere of jungle flora and fauna. With their numerous layers, these works establish colour scales and orthogonal shapes that create abstract planes. From the hand-dyeing process to the way in which they are exhibited – falling fully into space as weighted bodies – Millán’s work honours and, at the same time, softens the artisanal tradition. Speaking of the shift from drawing to textiles, Millán remarks that for her it meant a passage from representing to re-collecting, as a creative ritual. Just as there is an expeditionary component to her works – she is an expert explorer of the mysteries of the material – there is also something of containment. In one of her essays, Ursula K. Le Guin developed the “carrier bag theory of fiction” from one of Elizabeth Fisher’s ideas, wherein she argued in her 1975 book Women’s Creation that the first cultural artefact created by humans was probably a container.8 The history we all know includes many narratives full of spears and sticks used to conquer nature; however, the careful gathering and collection of resources has been indispensable for the continuity of life.

Returning to Millán’s work, along with the density and overlap of material, embroidery, and ribbons that fall like rain – elements where the laboriousness of the craftsmanship is evident –is also testament to the delicate use of time. Nothing in her work happens at speed; a cult of patience and the wisdom of time is at work in the meticulous decisions taken. Sewing, knitting, embroidering, threading: these are actions that can be carried out in company or in solitude, though they always require the confidence that comes from experience acquired with the passing of time. Here, the landscape is also the time that travels between the mental image, the colours, and the coven of handicrafts.

Hanging behind the textile, in the second space of the exhibition, is a graphic work by Del Río in which a poster on the wall proclaims “Arte, una artesanía desesperada” [“Art, a desperate craft”] (Sin título [Untitled], 2018). Here it is not a question of distinguishing art from craft, but of asking specifically about the qualities that drive these respective practices. In this regard, Del Río surrenders to the remarkable

8 Ursula K. Le Guin, Teoría de la bolsa de transporte de la ficción [The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction], Oficios Varios, Chile, 2021.

experimental power of fluid categories and makes images appear that renew the fiction of the littoral, as in the series “Litoral y Coca-Cola” [“Littoral and Coca-Cola”] (2009),9 which, through its muddy treatment of the paint, conjures the power of the brown-gold Paraná, like a kind of local magic. Or there is the series of drawings that picture the ombú, a tree specimen native to the Argentinian littoral, as well as to Paraguay and southern Brazil. Trees and flowers stand erect, like monuments on a plain, watched over by seven moons and skies with sensual eyes. The small landscapes in grey pencil on rice paper make the modern tradition of the regional landscape genre even more fragile by taking references from art history, with a particular brazenness, that range from Leónidas Gambartes and Roberto Aizenberg to Tarsila do Amaral. Lying somewhere between fiction and interference, Bustos’s audio-visual work, Paisajes del alma [Landscapes of the Soul] (2011)10 uses the language of the natural sciences and the diorama to expose the exoticizing rationale that has dominated the historical narrative and favoured the exploitation of resources. Dialectically, it also raises the difficulty of entering the jungle, in this case, of the province of Salta. The relationship people have with wild forces is neither unanimous nor limited to nature; it lies somewhere between respect and fear. And it is in this sense that the exhibition continues into its third space.

Upstream Paisaje peregrino explores questions about land as a living entity, the relationship between territory and social groups, and the sovereignty of these groups, and of women in particular. Bustos reveals the permanence of the exploitative colonial relationships in her visual montages that superimpose experiences separated by centuries, thus condensing the journey through time with significant speed and acuity. Such is the case of Antropología de la mula [Anthropology of the Mule] (2007),11 a work belonging to the Museo Moderno which shows that the commercial shipping routes in colonial times and the drug trafficking routes of today are identical, where the signifier “mule” is transferred from the animal to the women in transit. Critically, also included in the exhibition are two early works by Del Río that reflect on femicides and the objectification of women’s bodies as a commodity analogous to

9 See pages 83, 84 and 85. 10 See page 63. 11 See page 57.

beef. On the one hand, there is “Sin título” [“Untitled”] (1992),12 a series of collages made from the pages of magazines that show family, work or leisure scenes in which the bodies are replaced by photographs of pieces of meat. On the other hand, there is a piece from 2000, a work that is a book consisting of pages of fabric embroidered with phrases the artist transcribed from news reports, highlighting their focus on the power of the patriarchy and of class in criminal events. “La mataron porque estorbaba” [“She was killed because she stood in the way”] is embroidered in red thread on silk in a gesture that contrasts the sinister nature of the text with the soft, smooth materials used to write it.

The selection of works also exposes the violence exercised over the sovereignty and cultivation of land, as in the case of the flags for Millán and Bustos’s project, Plantío Rafael Barrett [Rafael Barrett Plantation],13 made for this exhibition. The project is part of the micro-political interactions of the two artists, which have led to their involvement in specific communities that are fighting for their rights; in this case, social organisations in Paraguay and Argentina. The struggles revolve around land ownership, the debate on agrarian reform, environmental problems inherent to rural agriculture, the social and solidarity economy and food education, beginning with the care of native seeds. These are just some of the agendas the artists have advanced since 2019, when they began the plantation project at a place opposite the old Paraguayan Congress, in Asunción. It is an action that has continued through to today, in different local forums. In addition, there is a subtle relationship between seeds as a resource and as a unit of time, as well as the concept of time in the work of both artists: a landscape can be as tiny as a seed and will grow under the care of each community through a unique language: “Cada pueblo les habla a sus cultivos, a sus semillas, en su propia lengua” [“Each people speaks to their crops, to their seeds, in their own language”].14

The interaction with micro-politics is also evident in Bustos’s work Burning Books (2020),15 which allows us to imagine the artist working with watercolours as she replaces images of books burned at different moments in history. The liquid and critical power of the watercolours brings to life all the words and images that, decades ago, were silenced through the social control exercised by authoritarian states. It is

12 Two of the collages that are part of the series can be seen on pages 106 and 107. 13 See page 155. 14 Ramón Vera Herrera, “Tiempo de palabras y semillas”, in Patricia Lizarraga and Carlos Alberto Vicente (Co-ordinators), La revolución de una semilla, El colectivo, Buenos Aires, 2021, p. 41. 15 See page 157.

surprising to find literary classics among the titles; the work serves to remind us of the denial that lurks in the maelstrom of public life.

Using a variety of graphic resources such as collage, banners and school worksheets, the artworks in this area of the exhibition condemn the persistent inequalities that have prevailed since colonial times and through to the present day. Hence the context becomes a reality that can be interfered with through micro-political practices in which communications acquire special prominence.

Wind rose In addition to creative and critical interactions with the context, this exhibition also includes fraternal relationships, learning and community vocation. In the early 2000s, Millán settled in Yataity, Paraguay, 180 kilometres from Asunción, where she lived with the village weavers, developing an extensive work process with them. Her work El vértigo de lo lento [The Vertigo of Slowness] (2002)16 involved recovering, identifying and recreating traditional weavings. She learned ao poi in the village, hand-spinning and weaving the cotton on a loom, and the laborious task of yu thread or lace embroidery. Her relationship with the weavers lasted for more than a decade, and Millán’s influence on contemporary Argentinian art can also be traced back to her dissemination of these traditions. Here there are no boundaries to distinguish art, craft and artistic and community work; they converge in a stream of shared knowledge.

This work by Millán, together with Guarida [Lair] (2002) – a series of sculptures made of mud, straw and honey formed into anthill-like mounds and musical instruments – functions as a passage that takes the viewer to the fourth and last space of the exhibition, which is dedicated to more subtle approaches to the practices of the three artists. The origins of their practices go back to the knowledge inherited from the Río de la Plata, Guaraní and Jesuit traditions and intersects with the family and domestic spheres. Their works transform manual chores into rituals that are as close to craftsmanship as they are to a spiritual exercise. It is not about a particular condition but rather the certain spiritual qualities that the works acquire, qualities that are there and that we make contact with upon seeing them. From a period devoted to the practice of Zen meditation, Millán exhibits virgins camouflaged in the mighty red rivers of the Misiones jungle. Bustos, meanwhile, evokes mythology with a painting where souls are not incarnated in bodies but within the earth. Del Río casts a spell on the instability of the world in a recent small painting made with oil and eggshells, which reads “Dios está lejos” [“God is far away”]. In an interview during this investigation, she had previously expressed that “El dibujo

16 See page 53.

es para creyentes” [“Drawing is for believers”], among other statements related to the above. In this sense, drawing for her is also a meditative act, where the repetition of a gesture is a vehicle for clearing the mental noise, as can be seen in the series “Tin Tin” (2011), which emerged during a residency in Spain in an area known for its olive plantations. Del Río executed drawings in pencil over oil stains, working with a very small motif: a figure eight, a double curl, a chain of serpents. The zigzagging of the pencil allowed a series of characters to appear, from who knows what planet, because, if there is one thing the artist does in her experiments, it is to rob us of the perception of any conventional expectations. It could also be said that her calling is to conceptualise her experiences through short, sharp verses – like a rapper – when she states, “La geometría tranquiliza” [“Geometry soothes”]. It is with this rhythm that she paints a series of circles, black as shoe polish, on bricks; or cuts out felts that she then transforms into the tiny faces of cloth and tin characters. Cutting and pasting, this is the basic rhythm by which the simplest thing acquires the most extraordinary attributes.

The circle at the core of Paisaje peregrino is a recurrent presence that contains and expands. In addition to Del Río’s black circles on bricks, there is an anachronistic earth17 represented in a painting by Bustos and a carmine textile by Millán at the centre of which floats a sphere, a cat’s eye.18 Landscape here is at its most abstract, drinking in a universal language: at its foundation lies their confidence in artistic practice as a devotional praxis.

17 See page 45. 18 See page 153.