BIO
I am an Argentine artist and educator based in Toronto with a BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University.
My work circles around the mundane through the creation of spaces, images and actions that propose uncanny participatory experiences. I meticulously research ordinary domestic materials such as food, litter and kitchen cloths in order to reflect on both intimate and social-political issues around migration, belonging, gender and power. Throughout my work, I employ techniques stemming from art installation, performance art, drawing and printmaking as well as historically female creative practices such as cooking, sewing and embroidering.
I have exhibited in venues including Sur Gallery, Walnut Contemporary, Trinity Square Video, Xpace Cultural Centre, Blank Canvas and Harbourfront Centre. Since my arrival to Canada I have avidly fostered creative collaborations to work in the intersections of my art and social practice. This path has led me to partner with inspiring organizations such as Sketch Working Arts, Neighbourhood Arts Network, North York Arts, Scarborough Arts, Blank Canvas, Pendulum Project, Younger Than Beyoncé, Feminist Art Gallery and the Indigenous Visual Culture Office at OCAD University. Furthermore, I have founded and coordinated several award-winning collaborative art projects working within diverse communities in Toronto, Halifax, Buenos Aires, Rawson, Quito and Belize.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Commonplace
A popular proverb commonly used in Spanish speaking countries states that “dirty cloths are washed at home”, or that “you can wash your dirty linen with…” a particular person or group of people. A similar but rather constricting motto is rendered in English as “you don’t air your dirty laundry.” Allegories about washing or airing our dirty cloths suggest the longing to share messy, unsuccessful, intimate and at times traumatic domestic stories.
Inspired by diverging interpretations of this popular saying, my work focuses on an exhaustive exploration of used cloths donated by more than 200 women of my family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. Both intimate and universal, rags are used across classes and cultures, becoming unique palimpsests that are embedded with substantial stories from our lives. The donated cloths are then delicately assembled and incorporated to my work in the creation of a large-scale immersive textile installation that the audience in invited to enter.
The work’s mundane, worn and pungent elements complicate romantic representations of the female identity creating an experience that is at the same time welcoming, mesmerizing and abject. Commonplace re-frames and reenacts the ordinary cloths into affective materials, actions, and spaces that embody female narratives of alliances and disconnections with cleaning and sustenance. Overall, this piece expands on my research around residues and femininity, urging us to reflect on the leftover pieces of unclean stories that rightfully shape us.
