He National museum of fine arts inaugurated “It could be me. Alicia D’Amico and photography as a collective experience”. The exhibition brings together 46 images of the Argentine artist included in a historical sociological essay, carried out by researchers Elizabeth Jelin and Pablo Vilaon the daily life of the popular sectors in Buenos Aires and surroundings.
Curated by the artist and researcher Augustine Triquell, the exhibition recreates the book “It could be me”, written by the sociologists and researchers Jelin and Vila in 1987. The publication, which can be read in the room, reconsidered the link between the social sciences and photography, based on the images of Alice D’Amico (1933-2001)who was in charge of recording the field work.
“We are pleased to present at the Bellas Artes an exhibition by Alicia D’Amico, one of the most outstanding Argentine photographers of the 20th century. Through her works, we see her sensitive and humanistic gaze, and her interest in the social context, the incipient feminist cause, and literature, among other topics,” she stated. Andrés Duprat, Museum director.
The artistic director of the Fine Arts, mariana marchesi who stated: “This exhibition, postponed from 2020, revolves around the reissue of a book that is the result of work carried out during the democratic transition. It also supposed a way of conceiving the construction of knowledge in a collective way, because those who were the subjects/objects of study had a manifest participatory role”.
“The idea of the title of the exhibition and of the book has to do with taking photography away from its referential limitation, from what it shows, to what it could be. Bringing these images to the present, then, is to see what these people ‘could be’ today, these realities, and see what they have become, 40 years of democracy”, added the curator of the exhibition.
Elizabeth Jelin, co-author of the investigative essay, recalled how the study embodied in the publication was conceived: “We began this work in 1985 with meetings in different neighborhoods and places, in suburbs throughout Greater Buenos Aires. A few years before, during the dictatorship, it was extremely difficult to do social research: you couldn’t go out with a survey and go ring bells, you couldn’t go to the same neighborhood many times, because everything was dangerous”.
In the text and in the exhibition, D’Amico’s photographic record is organized into six chapters, which address topics such as the various ways of earning a living for the urban popular sectors, migration, life in democracy, the various situations of waiting and the relationship of women with leisure time.
In addition, accompanying the exhibition, on Friday, March 10, at 6:00 p.m., under the title “Proximity and distance”, a talk will be held at the Museum that proposes to reflect on the intersections raised in the room and in the book. The meeting, with free admission, will include the participation of researchers and artists Laura Gutiérrez, Sergio Caggiano, Francisco Medail and Juan Cruz Pedroni.
“It could be me. Alicia D’Amico and photography as a collective experience” will be exhibited until April 2, 2023 in room 42 on the second floor of the Museum. Days and times to visit it: Tuesday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., with free admission.
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