Opening: Saturday August 26th 7.30pm
Mud, a living material resting on the banks of the rivers and tributaries of the Paraná region bears witness to and plays a key role in the stories of the littoral. This exhibition brings together current and past ceramics crafted at the Ceramic workshop of La Guardia, founded in Santa Fe over sixty years ago, alongside the production of artist Madalí Pizarro. Both are dedicated to researching, experimenting and preserving the ceramic process throughout all its stages: the collection of the mud from the banks of the Santa Fe stream, the kneading and preparation of the clay, the tasks in the workshop and, finally, to the firing phase for its transformation into ceramics.
The suitable mud is found on the coasts, the liminal space of the streams and lagoons, a space of contact and interaction between water and earth which, as solidary forces, form a material that is equally plebeian and majestic; furthermore, specialists note that the clay of La Guardia stands out for its remarkable plasticity, making it very suitable for manipulation and for crafting ceramics of diverse shapes. But clay serves other purposes and exhibits different properties. In her production, Madalí Pizarro starts with paper as fleeting annotations and then fixes them in the clay, which is used as a pictorial pigment or
ceramic.
The artist collects experiences from a deprived area of the city of Santa Fe, a border like that formed by the river, which is always mutating and blurred. This procedure reveals, with the same material of the context, often overlooked contemporary situations, recreated alongside the material remains of the past that were used, in a hidden manner, for the construction of architectures and the disposal of waste. In this operation, it is the mud from the banks of rivers, streams and lagoons that opens up the possibility of narrating and modelling popular symbols of the city's ever-changing history.
Clarisa Appendino
