Gabriela Agüero
Together Apart: #Nest

14.10.20 04.11.20

The issues that I address, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, are always linked to identity, memory, the passage of time and its transformations, the rescue of the past or the everyday, to investigate what constitutes us. In the realization of my work, I incorporate the transformation process that time produces in materials, I build images from the rescue of different elements and traces. I incorporate photography as a valuable resource that dialogues with graphic production, I mount objects rescued through chineé colleé on a support, I explore technical, material and compositional possibilities. The moment of doing is very important to me.

GABRIELA ABOUT TOGETHER APART: NEST
Today the Nest is a place that overwhelms me, however, the reflections that emerged from the Program Together at a Distance led me to reclaim my nest, to recover what was valuable and to raise awareness of my workshop as a nest (refuge), and as a place of construction of other nests. Thinking about the Nest led me to wonder how it is built … and I remembered that photo that Cecilia took in ´ace, in which I discovered the attitude of delicacy and care that my hands express. I wondered if this attitude would be reflected in every action I perform on a daily basis and I decided to capture the everyday, simple, repeated moments; and their movements weaving wefts.
My hands weave nests
My hands hold nests
I build nests from the simplest everyday

Collective nests
With Denisse and Richard, we think of Nature as the collective nest par excellence and from the place that we are currently living in, we recognized that the sky that covers us is always the same sky. Thus we collect images of the pieces of sky that we can see from each house and of the sounds that flood our nests, weaving visual and sound images in a projection with video mapping effects

Imaginary nests
Childhood is for me, an imaginary nest that transcends past, present and future, that arising from my own memories, is re-created in the childhood of my children, building a nest that again is not a place, but a space where they nurture the links. The songs of María Elena Walsh came to mind, in which my childhood worlds were built and that, so fixed in memory, I sang to my children when they were little like a lullaby. With Carla and Richard, we think of El Mar as a landscape that unites imaginary through time, taking up the idea of Nature as a collective Nest.
And so, I was able to unite the creative play of my youngest daughter, building seascapes with the findings of past summers, with a model (three-dimensional puzzle) that I built with prints made from sunsets at sea, and intervened with stones and shells. Everything was part of a warp where our experiences, visual and sound experiences were woven, in a video mapping projection, excellently edited by Richard.

BIO
Gabriela Aguero
1973 | Argentina
2016 | Founder of IMPRONTA, Engraving and Printed Art workshop

STUDIES
Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón, Bs As, Argentina
Professorate and Degree in Visual Arts with Orientation in Engraving (IUNA), Bs As, Argentina
Engraving Techniques with Alicia Scavino, Alicia Díaz Rinaldi, Norma Villarreal, Graciela Buratti

EXHIBITIONS
2019 | Vestigios, Photoetches, H C D Morón, Bs As, Argentina
2018 | Vestigios, Photoetched, Impact 10, Santander, Spain
2016 | Metáforas de Buenos Aires, Monocopies, Espacio ZERO, Quilmes, Bs As, Argentina
2008 | Metáforas de Buenos Aires, Monocopies, Alianza Francesa de Flores, Bs As, Argentina
2007 | Monocopies and photographs, H C D Morón. Bs As, Argentina

RESIDENCIES
2019-20 | Micro-residence, ´ace Project, Bs As, Argentina

AWARDS
2019 | 2nd Prize International Miniprint of Cantabria, Spain
2017 | Special mention of the Jury, Provincial A Visual Contest, C P Surveying, Province of Bs As, Argentina
2012 | 2nd Mention, National Academy of Fine Arts, Bonifacio del Carril Award, Engraving, Bs As, Argentina
2008 | Monocopy Mention Award of the LIII Manuel Belgrano Plastic Arts Salon, Bs As, Argentina
2006 | 1st Prize in Engraving, SAAP, XVIII SAAP Small Format Hall, Bs As, Argentina

Related Activities

Exhibitions, Together Apart

#2 | NEST: results
Artists in dialogue

09.12.20

During 2020, we carried out the first two sessions of Together Apart. The first session took as a conceptual and practical framework the REFUGE and the second, the NEST. Through those starting points, both of which refer to caring atmospheres and structures for coexistence, we were able to think and create in a wide variety of directions and layers. We reflected on our pandemic context, a situation for which we had to find ourselves in the virtual non-space, but also a situation thanks to which people from many different countries were able to work simultaneously. Assuming this complex situation, more than 20 participants per session created new pieces –some in exercise format–, took up projects that they had already worked on in the past or collectively set out to create new projects that will continue to develop beyond the scope of our meetings. This exhibition, virtual as well, reflects what the artists produced during this program.

CURATORIAL ESSAY
by Daniela Ruíz Moreno [Curator-in-residency]

Taking these refuge and nest issues also in their complexity, we asked ourselves questions that made each of the participants involve their personal experiences, memory, memories and experiences from each of their territories. We addressed questions that sought to keep us in constant movement; at times we went through very optimistic or pessimistic visions about the possibility or necessity of having a shelter or a nest, and at other times, we were able to articulate more complex visions, enduring in intermediate and liminal states. For both, we took as a theoretical structure of support and dialogue the thought of Félix Guattari presented in The Three Ecologies (1989). His ethical-political approach that highlights the molecular domains of sensitivity, intelligence and desire, as well as his articulation of the three ecological registers (environment, social relations and human subjectivity), helped us to expand our creations and thoughts in relation to shelter and nest.

During the second session –nest– the gaze towards natural structures was also very present. We watched and learned about different types of nests made by birds or protective structures for other animals. We thought of the house and the workshop as nests. The diversity in age and origin of the artists allowed a great richness of reflections on different states in relation to the nest. We spoke of nests from the past, nests that we are building in the present, nests that are no longer nests since they oppress or suffocate and of new nests that we imagine or wish to build in the future. Projects were presented that included the use of organic materials, creations with what was available in the workshop, project of shared files, new photographic views on everyday life, new views on the past and even reflections on language as a generator of identity as well as limiting structure. We went through different sensations in relation to the nests, some presented it as an impossible state to reach, others as a space full of melancholy and others, instead, as structures of freedom where we could explore the becoming of existence. Other works presented the feelings of paranoia that can arise when human nests or states of refuge are threatened and the feelings of discomfort when it feels like losing the intimate conditions of a nest.

Together Apart has functioned as a program that opened up possibilities for meeting and collaborative creation. It has made possible the creation of new rhythms and synchronies for a limited time but whose reverberations and echoes continue to affect in unexpected directions.

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