Opening October 5th 6pm
Visits: from wednesday to sunday from 2 p.m to 7p.m
Removing the colonial legacy would seem to require a more complex operation than merely removing its symbols or replacing them with others. Although the figure of Columbus is no longer in the surroundings of the government house in Argentina, its image remains intact in the collective memory. How to turn monuments into witnesses that talk about social transformation? Alexis Minkiewicz attempts possible answers through the construction of counter-allegories that arise from altering the narrative of official monuments.
On the centennial of the inauguration of Arnaldo Zocchi's Columbus Monument, Minkiewicz produces his own unholy, dismembered version for the Manzana de las Luces. A few blocks away from the original site - in one of the few colonial buildings that have survived the Argentine drive to obliterate the past - he set up a distorted monument. The references to the Catholic Monarchs and the Church have been removed from the sculptural group. Like the victim of a shipwreck, an underwater Columbus indulges in an orgy with two octopuses in an allusion to Hokusai's The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife; the angel pointing to the future - the glorious conquest - becomes a sort of wingless Icarus who, like a voyeur, bespeaks this grotesque and timeless scene. The sailors, instead of loading cargo onto the ship, remain engaged in an ambiguous struggle.
The irreverent iconographic mutations, the heroic narrative bending over itself and the rich intertextuality with art history and with the various movements of the monument allow us to regard this work as a resurgence of the dissident tradition of Latin American Neo-Baroque. This interplay of polysemic layers, a passion for excess and artifice, breaks with a monolithic vision of identity to give way to other foundational myths that contend with the official narrative.
NO OFICIAL. Historias montadas, relatos disidentes Episodio 1: La piedad de las estatuas is presented at BIENALSUR 2021 with the support of the Secretaría de Patrimonio Cultural del Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación.
Photo: La piedad de las estatuas from Alexis Minkiewicz. Illustration by Demian Stendelis
