Covert refers to the world of bullfighting, the screen behind which the bullfighters take refuge when “something goes wrong.”
However, the name of the work also suggests meanings directly associated with a highly significant time for Argentina, the recent crisis of 2001, when something went wrong…
Using the bullfighting arena as a metaphor for reality, the transference of meaning incorporates zinc roofing as a way of materializing the concept. The choice of this material is underscored by the way the zinc sheets are indiscriminately beaten by hammers, as did the pot-banging citizens back in 2001. The support structures also replicate, in symbolic form, the devices used by the security forces to prevent demonstrators from taking to the streets.
Esteban Alvarez uses his proposal as a polysemous device with multiple references fanning out to support one of the central curatorial axes underlying the open invitation to artists to participate in the Second Edition of BIENALSUR: Memory and Oblivion.
