This two-part exhibition takes as its starting point the tension between wetness and dryness. Moving between these two qualities, the works brought together here explore aspects such as landscape, eroticism, language, colonial memory, extractive violence, crisis, and the regeneration of the planet. This first exhibition explores the possibilities of the liquid, while the second will focus on the desert.
Entering the wet allows us to imagine an encounter between thaws, slime, and rivers, where the fluidity and changing states of water function as metaphors for non-normative forms of existence that urge us to end an anthropocentric view of the world. The eventual disappearance of the river and its banks—as evoked by Barbara Oettinger’s work that gives the project its title—suggests not only a blurring of boundaries but also the changes of a planet on the brink of collapse.
The pieces by these artists, which form part of the Il Posto collection, remind us of the interdependence between moisture, life, saliva, river, plant, rain, and what it means to understand water not so much as an inert resource but as a living force that is also the only possibility for the future.
Artists: Paula Baeza Pailamilla (CL), Seba Calfuqueo (CL), Enrique Ramírez (CL), Regina José Galindo (GUAT), Carlos Motta (CO), Wynnie Mynerva (PE), Barbara Oettinger (CL), Fernando Prats (CL), Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa (GUAT) y Johanna Unzueta (CL).
