The Subversive Body -live performance- (2017)
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 and shaped and stiffened into a new corpus. 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.
First conceived and exhibited as installation, this performative version of the work was commisioned for IDIORRITMIAS, at MACBA Museum, Barcelona, curated by Pablo Martinez and Soledad Gutiérrez.
All image documentation of the performance: courtessy of MACBA Barcelona / Photos: Dani Canto