Moments. Gespräch mit Graciela Carnevale

In 1968 Graciela Carnevale took part in the Ciclo de Arte Experimental, organized by the art group of the same name, with “Acción del Encierroa”: without being informed in advance, the public was locked in the exhibition space for over an hour. In other words, she took prisoners. A glass front facing outward provided a view into the inside of the neutral space, structured as a White Cube, to the incarcerated visitors. Carnevale, who had been working with minimalist works from the radius of the “primary structures” since the mid-1960s, later increasingly turned to a practice of art understood as emancipatory and political; for example, in the capitalism critical movement “Tcamán Arde”, the archive of which Carnevale had organized.
In Moments, Carnevale’s work not only stands for a radical concept of the construction of public and witness, but, together with the archives, no less for a radical questioning of the possibility to present actions and political art in the museum context, accessible to the present.

As member of the artist’s group “Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia”, Graciela Carnevale (* 1942 in Marcos Juárez, Argentinien) participated in conceptual exhibitions and demonstrations against established art in the years between 1965 and 1969. Carnevale also worked in connection with the political-activist movement “Tucumán Arde”, and archived their actions. From 1994 in the collective “Grupo Patrimonio” she has held exhibitions, actions and interventions in urban spaces. Her artistic approach – represented by works in major collections in Latin America, as well as in MoMA, New York or MACBA, Barcelona and that, among others, could be viewed at the documenta 12 in Kassel – focusses on social questions and art as an ethical attitude.