03.25 — 04.25.21
Malba presents the seventh exhibition in the program "History as Rumor," dedicated to the piece "Las Poetisas" by Batato Barea (Junín, 1961–Buenos Aires, 1991), which is part of the series Tres mujeres descontroladas, created in collaboration with Alejandro Urdapilleta and Humberto Tortonese.
On June 24, 1990, at 2 a.m., in the flooded basement of Parakultural in Buenos Aires, Batato Barea elbows his way through the punk crowd of Todos Tus Muertos and Conmoción Cerebral. A Radio Nacional announcer recited the poem Voracidad del sonido by an unknown but real poet, María del Carmen Suárez, which Batato had recorded on a cassette tape. Wearing two overlapping wigs, a purple satin blouse crossed by three plastic necklaces, a transparent skirt, and high heels, Batato interprets the poem with circular movements, his waist bending and his torso spinning in whirls. The tragic artist inscribes the work on his own body, already tracing the path to his sacrificial destiny.
History as Rumor
Multiple movement performances
On the occasion of the celebration of its nineteenth anniversary, Malba presents La historia como rumor (History as Rumor), an annual program of online exhibitions created by Gabriela Rangel, Malba’s artistic director, with the aim of documenting and contextualizing a set of performances that took place at different times and in various places in the Americas and the Caribbean, in a historical transition period marked by the end of the Cold War and the advent of the internet.
A collaboration between guest curators and various international museums and institutions is the starting point to present a research project every month that will allow us to revisit a series of actions and performances that became production milestones of their time, and that will engage in a direct or indirect conversation with problem areas of the present. A video record of testimonies from spectators who witnessed those performances, and of experts from different disciplines giving their opinion on them, will create an archive that will make up the oral history for each of the projects.
The selection of artists and specific actions respond to a very broad framework that began to be debated regionally in 1981, at the First Latin American Colloquium on Non-Objectual Art and Urban Art at the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin, Colombia. The starting point of the selection also understands the historical transmission of performances as a rumor, defined as a multiple movement in a diagram sketched by Ulises Carrión, Mexican poet and visual artist based in Amsterdam. Both frameworks propose the reconfiguration of a set of works in a period of time influenced by the conceptualisms that began globally since the 1960s.
The exhibition of each performance includes a record of the action, along with vast archival material, such as photographs, films, storyboards, press clippings and documents that aid the reconstruction of the piece and its context. It also includes an interview with someone who has witnessed the performance and four video testimonies by leading specialists from different disciplines. The choice of the various voices and materials is intended to recontextualize these performances in the present as contemporary expressions.
The series La historia como rumor will be available until September 21st, 2021 along with Malba’s 20th Anniversary celebration.
Next Actions
April 2021
Carlos Leppe
Lección de acuarela (La escuela)
Perú, 1987
May 2021
Tunga
Xifópagas Capilares entre Nós
Río de Janeiro, 1984
Data Sheet
Curator: Laura Ramos
Witness: Humberto Tortonese
Rumoristas: Mario Bellatin, Cecilia Palmeiro, Marlene Wayar y Graciela Speranza
Production: Pablo Solberg
Batato Barea Trustee: Seedy González Paz
Institutional Colaborators: Archivo Batato Barea y Galería Cosmocosa
Inaugural Conversation
Participants: Laura Ramos y Fernando Noy
Thursday, March 25 at 6:00 p.m.
