Venerated figures, considered miraculous or cult, such as San Cayetano, the Virgin of Itatí, the Difunta Correa, San La Muerte, the Gauchito Gil or more current as Eva Perón, Diego Maradona or Gildaare protagonists of the sample “Argentine Popular Devotions” at the National Library. The exhibition can be visited, with free admission, from Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m., in the Leopoldo Marechal Hall of the space located at Agüero 2502 in the city of Buenos Aires.
The exhibition emphasizes those devotions that go beyond the canonical cult and also gives rise to those that occupy a place in the official pantheon and have an inescapable mass character. In turn, it is a sample of the existing bibliography on the subject, made up of relevant academic research, as well as regional literary works, publications from religious publishing houses and anonymous popular pamphlets.
“There is great ethnographic and aesthetic interest. For example, the documentary is going to be shown ‘The quartered‘ from the filmmaker from Salta Martin Aibar, filmed within the framework of the Nuestra Señora del Carmen festival, in the small town of Nazareno. A varied production of sculptures in lead, bone and wood from Achilles Coppini, a well-known sculptor saint death”, he detailed Maria Redondocurator of the exhibition together with Emiliano Ruiz Diazin relation to other materials that will be part of the meeting.
In addition, the curator highlights: “We will have the collaboration of the photographer and art scholar Sergio Barbieri, who dedicated his life to studying popular and religious culture and will provide photographic material on ex-votos and images taken in the Andean zone at the same Hermogenes Gaiusknown as the Imagery of the Puna”.
In addition to the exhibition in the Leopoldo Marechal Room, in the Plaza del Lector Rayuela there will be an exhibition called “Saints and Shrines”in charge of Marcelo Huici, who portrayed different scenes linked to popular life and belief in sanctuaries, temples and cemeteries in the Federal Capital and the province of Buenos Aires. The photographs are focused, above all, on profane or unofficial cults, but also on some of the manifestations of official belief such as San Cayetano.
The exhibition begins with images of the Late Correa, whose myth dates back to the 19th century, at the time of Rosas and Facundo Quiroga. According to legend, Deolinda Correa She was the wife of a man who fought for Quiroga’s army and, left alone, she goes looking for him and in the desert, she dies of thirst, but continues to breastfeed her son. Currently, the cult of the figure of the deceased continues to this day, being massive and one of the most popular in the country.
On the other hand, the sample also recovers the fanaticism for the Gauchito Gil, “a cult that became more popular and federal than that of the Difunta Correa. Of Corrientes origin, precisely from the Mercedes area, it comes from the 19th century, from the War of the Triple Alliance, but starting in the 70s with the great migratory flow of Corrientes and faithful, it began to expand to the territory of the province of Buenos Aires and from there to the popular neighborhoods and the whole country. On the street one can see the figure in the back of the cars, tattoos of people who make a G on their arms, t-shirts and flags in soccer stadiums,” curator Ruiz Diaz told the News Agency Telam.
Finally, it is possible to contemplate contemporary personalities that had a surprising influence as quasi-religious myths in the national context, such as Gilda, Evita or Diego Maradona“In Rosario the Maradona Church that started a group of friends and, although it started as a joke, ended up being a place of worship”, explains the curator. In addition to images of the soccer idol, a book gathers the typical phrases of Catholicism that the fans changed for those that said the soccer player. In this regard, Ruiz Diaz explained: “It is a mixture of idolatry, popular worship and admiration with some of the specific elements of the Christian religion.”
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