Micaela Muzi presented her project “Controversy limit/overflow” at the first ´aceNITE of 2019, ehich she produced during her residency at Fundación´ace.

CONTROVERSY LIMIT/OVERFLOW (by Micaela Muzi)

Implementing geometry as a metaphor for social regime, I seek to delve into the biological, technological and social transversalities that interfere in the development of individuals’ subjectivity. Subjectivity constitutes the basis for existence and the content that defines us. It is a dynamic entity through which we think, dream, feel, desire and experiment the world around us. Is there a possibility for the development of subjectivity inside the current parameters of the social regime?

Geometric, precise and delimited figures, symbolize the morphology upon which social systems are structured and built. Do limits contain and give structure or on the contrary, do they restrict and generate alienation? Does the act of overflow present fluidity and a possibility for change or, on the contrary, does it condemn us to live in a schizophrenic fluidity? Does the split of the social regime develop into a fertile territory to cultivate an equilibrium, or, does it turn into an arid zone with irreparable fissures? This inquiry delves into the circumstantial clash between limit and overflow.

In our contemporaneity, the rise of the visual and the proliferation of images establish an era of visuality. In this way, technology becomes a key factor of the socio-cultural formation of individuals. Does the possibility to develop subjectivity exist inside the technological sphere we are immersed in? Can splits in the technological structure be generated to become fertile ground in the sphere of mass-media standardization spread by our screens? Does technology’s geometrical thinking and its cerebellum of data-storage plates limit individuals’ synapsis?

In 2019 FIG Bilbao, International Art on Paper Festival,  reinforced its international character by designating Argentina as a guest country and including the Fundación´ace as one of the invited Argentine institutions. According with this,  the foundation participated in a special project within the fair: the “Cubes of Temptations”. This is an exhibition space made up of 2x2x2 meters wooden cubes where emerging artists and / or advanced students carry out interventions taking as a central theme paper in any of its variants. This section of the fair wants to give visibility, disseminate and enhance emerging artistic practices and are offered as utopian spaces to carry out projects based on works on paper that embrace / coexist / dialogue together with the continent (the wooden cube), which instead it can be transformed into content.

Within this framework, the organizers offered Alicia Candiani, our director, the curatorship of four of the “Cubes of Temptations”. The proposal was a very welcome challenge for Alicia, completely  alined with her theoretical and practical explorations about the expansion of the limits of artistic practices that involve print media and art on paper, that both have been developed within our residency program. In the selection process, she focused on artists  who had worked (whether on scholarships, in residences or with specific projects) in any of the different Proyecto´ace programs, in such a way that our participation expressed our vision of contemporary graphics and at the same time showed pieces produced in our workshops where we work collaboratively.

The final selection included Laurel Ponturo, Ian Ballantyne, Juan Reos and Micaela Muzi. The artists were then asked to make a new installation proposal for the cubes based on what they produced with us, recommending consider the cubes as a space to intervene and not simply as a container to hang the work. The selected artists were invited to travel to Bilbao to make their interventions, participated in all the associated activities, gave workshops and competed for the Temptation Cubes Award, which was finally awarded to Micaela Muzi, one of our invited artists, with a project carried out during her residency in ´ace at the beginning of the same year.