ARGENTINA
Graciela Sacco
Sacco, Graciela. "Tension Admisible". Buenos Aires, 2013.
An ordinary steak knife juts out of the white gallery wall. One of its sharp metal sides reflects the eyes of a woman, illuminating her life and light, the other side casts a dark shadow on the ground, representing her death. Her murder. At least, that is what I see when I look at the image. When I stare into the eyes before me, each gaze is innocent, unguarded and trusting. Graciela Sacco’s series, “Tensión admisible,” captures the cold reality of domestic violence in Argentina, where a woman is murdered every 30 hours. The knives are juxtaposed with images of men looking through closed blinds, trying to glimpse what is not theirs. I feel the invasion of privacy for these nameless, bodyess women.
Raquel Forner
Forner, Raquel. "El Drama". Salón Nacional De Artes Plásticas, Buenos Aires, 1942.
The reality of the international context that artists and intellectuals were facing, the Second World War, forces Raquel Forner to observe the chaotic landscape of the world.
The drama is composed of a tragic and violent landscape that tears the characters apart. The land, trees, architecture and human being part of these views of horror create scenarios between the outer landscapes of devastation, hopelessness and bewilderment of man or more precisely of woman, in front of a shattered world.
Several women star in the foreground. The atmosphere that is breathed after a bombing surround the scene: creating a climate of not repeating history and "never again".
Diana Dowek
Diana Dowek's early work portrayed her political posture and her attempts at raising awareness of social issues and struggles during President Isabel Peron's reign. One of the most known paintings that conveyed these terroristic events would be “Paisaje con retrovisor II”.
The artist work in her exhibition in the Bellas Artes Museum in Buenos Aires were all done during the 70’s, an era charged with political violence.
The "Paisajes" canvases were painted as if from a car, with the rearview mirror reflecting some detail referring to the military's use of kidnapping and murder, connoting the systematic disappearance of thousands of Argentines by the military regime.
Promoting human rights and raising awareness, she includes Ford Falcon cars, became a common subject in her painting due to the disappearance of persons in 1983, owed to police often abducting people with unlicensed Falcons.
Dowek, Diana. “Paisaje con retrovisor II”. Buenos Aires, 1975.
Elba Bairon
In a society focussed on overindulgence and glut, the artist wants the receptor to appeal to its senses of sight, hearing and touch. The whiteness of the surfaces, the lack of information and weight of the figures, the simplicity of the lines and even the missing title is what Bairon calls for in her installations: absolute silence and peace.