In Argentina, there had never before been a mass collective reflection about the civil status of women and other expressions of the feminine, a civil status which has always been in some way damaged, always imperfect. The repeated instances of gender violence paint a picture of normalized cruelty, something in essence highly ideological. In this context, the question asked by the NUM project, from its prism of art and feminine curatorship, has to do with which stories can be told, which bodies are visible, and which narratives can be read.
Recovering our imagination to change history is a proposal which challenges certain unacceptable omissions in the history of art, defying certain protocols of representation. It seeks to create a space for reflection enshrined in the point of contact between aesthetics and ethics, one capable of tackling the raft of gender issues raised in the wake of the creative and revolutionary wave that was the #Niunamenos manifestation (2015-2017). Outside the museum (in cultural centers, squares, social networks and universities) this sense of urgency was repeated in images and stories which put sexual differences, representation, and the uses of people’s bodies front and center. In similar vein, collectives came together, invited to join this exhibition, whose members used their bodies, physically and visibly, to mesh art, gender and politics in a novel and intense fashion in the public arena, in the street.
Recovering our imagination… suggests a new tension between highly contemporary works created in the heat of feminist action, which not only challenge today’s cis-heretodoxy (the matrix underlying our system) but inhabit alternative readings. In addition, as a live archive that is in constant flux, Recovering our imagination… seeks out dialogue, cutting through the plethora of artistic manifestation to find meaning in street action, committed to the present as much as it is to creating memory as part of its legacy.
