The Subversive Body (2016)

The sculptural installation The Subversive Body uses images of revolutionary and guerrilla movements during the last dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1984, culled from an Argentinian archive. Zito Lema has re-photographed these images, focusing primarily on the bodily gestures. Close-up and abstracted, the images become condensed traces of physical resistance against political horror. The imagery is printed in black and white on large paper that has been shaped and stiffened into a new corpus, the mould for which was the artist’s own body. Once paper has taken a certain form the fibre remembers this information, resulting in a sculpture that has a ‘double memory’: it recalls a shape as well as a historical event. The sculptures have been placed on slim, rectangular, low tables that are piled on top of each other—some in pairs, others as singles. The tables resemble working or research tables, but their human size is also reminiscent of coffins scattered around the floor.

(Fragment exhibition text - Wilfried Lentz Gallery)

All images: Installationview @ Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam Photos: Sander van Wettum