Acrylic on canvas, acrylic on canvas panel, limestone, video
IAB iron meteorite, 19 gr
MUSEO MODERNO, BUENOS AIRES 2023-24
Otumpa is derived from the Chiriguano word "motumpa", which means to deify, to enthrone, to idolize. This is how the native peoples referred to a flat plain of entangled and impenetrable vegetation. In the same way they named the geological formation hidden within this site: a basin, possibly generated by the impact of an extraterrestrial object. Since the 16th century, several Spanish expeditions guided by the natives ventured into the interior of Otumpa. They sought an enormous mass of iron named as the pit and the plain and that, without knowing it, had descended from the sky a few thousand years ago. Known as Mesón de Fierro, it became the most celebrated extraterrestrial rock among the thousands that fell upon Campo del Cielo. The Mesón's mythical aura grew after 1783 as it became an intraterrestrial treasure, after being buried and vanquished by colonizers who could not find the iron roots below it, roots of the purest iron they had ever seen.
Otumpa, welcomes visitors with a video projection that portrays Chaco’s native forests and its biodiversity -nowadays devastated by fashionable monocultures-, that paves the way for a space of contemplation.
At one end of the room, the meteorite reappears as a monumental painting; its immaterial image floats on a 1:1 scale, displaying that which cannot be seen. At the other end, a small 19-gram meteorite specimen, belonging to the collection of Vienna’s Natural History Museum and with which the artists had already worked in their exhibition Auf der Suche nach Mesón de Fierro, in 2018, returns after hundreds of years to the region of its original landing, the territory today known as Argentina. In the center of the room, two paintings from the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Lagoon (Mesón de Fierro, Chaco), made by the late great Lilly de Escribanich (Villa Angela, Chaco), visually and emotionally expand the imaginary around the cosmic event and its landscape, while also syncretizing its copious history. Thus, Otumpa offers a space for the visitor to be reunited with the image of that which is, but in absentia. What is missing, then, rather than being nowhere, could be found everywhere.