Kekena Corvalán. Red Artchivas: feminist curating and practices on the ground

The second lecture in the performances cycle “Vision and presence”, in this case given by the Argentinian writer Kekena Corvalán, a feminist curator and professor of Latin American art. She will be presenting the “Red Artchivas” [Women’s art/archive network] research and fieldwork project which, for the last fifteen years, has aimed to amplify the pathway of women and protest through collective, territorialised and self-aware artistic practices. 

The study focuses on two groups which produce their work from the starting point of friendship between women artists: the “Pipi Shermans” (Claudia García Lorente and Julieta Basso), residents of Mar del Plata, and the “Caudillas del Barro” (Susana Zapata, Tina Núñez Caminos and Luciana Pirro), residents of Victoria, Entre Ríos. 

From an Absurdist standpoint, the first engages in delirious formal exploration and in the lack of meaning which emerges from the unexpected, reinstating uncertainty in the ludic gesture of the domestic realm, before the vast sea where the Atlantic reaches the coast of Argentina. The second looks at how wetlands and water hyacinths are being damaged, with the artists applying mud to themselves and reinstating the ancient arts of the fire and performance in the context of environmental, patriarcal and castigatory abuse, both within and outside the art world. 

In both cases, embodied activism becomes living art and individual creation disappears as the loving gesture between the artists empowers all.