Mariela Scafati. Naming the World

The Conde Duque Cultural Centre will host the first solo institutional show in Spain by the Argentinian artist, Mariela Scafati, in the Vaults Room from 24 April to 19 July, reviewing her artistic career.

Scafati’s work is based on the canvas, but used in an unconventional way: rather than being a place to portray the image, its surface and materiality become a place for projection. Her works, which are expanded paintings transformed into sculptures, installations and murals, are no longer simple surfaces but places to develop collective subjectivity. She uses both colour and words in them.  

The installations that make up this exhibition, curated by Marta Ramos-Yzquierdo, include Family (Daniel, Kinga and Maite), 2019, Adrastus Collection, made with acrylic canvas, rope, iron and clothing—or furniture that stop being furniture. This experimental presence reformulates traditional genres, such as portraits or landscapes, as well as reviving the avant-garde and modernist tradition, bringing together new uses of art and design; or the Windows series, in which, in the same way as political posters are stuck on the walls of Argentinian public universities, in this case what appears on these sheets is a series of texts that the artist has taken from everyday conversation.