Opening: Friday August 18th, 3 p.m During the formative stage of the Argentine state, successive liberal governments developed an elaborate national cosmogony whose main goal was to create, through a set of symbols and iconography, a unified and credible narrative that could account for a shared history. The school, because of its role as an equalizer and the influence of pedagogical transmission flows carried by students within their families, became the quintessential institution the young Argentine state employed to establish a sense of national identity. The process was simultaneous: just as schools were created for the nation, a nation had to be designed for the school.
This exhibition brings together seminal works from the Udaondo collection that reflect the modern wish to capture national history in vivid images—in which the value of artistic practices was placed not on representing beauty, but on advancing the political aim of disseminating an idea. In dialogue with these historical works, contemporary artworks are presented which revisit the connection between patriotic illustration and the school as a nation-building device. Probably influenced by the constant flow of visual imagery from school textbooks, especially Billiken magazine, which played a major role in spreading the idea of “the Argentine,” these works reopen the question of the school’s role as a theatre of operations, from which patriotic content continues to serve as a shaping force in the country’s project.
Image: Rosalba Mirabella - La Abanderada from ‘Álbum’ series, 2017
