Exhibitions
Art after the original
The MAC—Museum of Contemporary Art of Bahía Blanca—is hosting the 2026 National Art Biennial until September 6. This edition proposes a re-examination of one of the most persistent questions in artistic creation: what does it mean to create when every work stems, in some way, from something that already exists? Under the title "The Echo of a Sound That Was Never Produced: Quotation, Version, Copy in Art and Life ," the Biennial brings together works that occupy this shifting territory where quotation, copy, homage, version, and rewriting coexist.
The call for entries received 242 projects from 22 provinces and 84 cities across Argentina. The proposals included works from artists and collectives in Mar del Plata, Puerto Tirol, La Plata, Costa Grande, Buenos Aires, and Bahía Blanca, among other locations throughout the country. The jury, composed of Mariana Pellejero, Federico Ruvituso, and Celeste Caporossi, selected nine projects for the exhibition and three others to be developed as actions and workshops during the Biennial.
The exhibition stems from an idea that permeates both artistic production and everyday life: no creation arises in complete isolation. Repeating, transforming, appropriating, creating versions, or returning a modified image are all operations that form part of cultural construction. From this perspective, authorship ceases to be understood as an absolute starting point and becomes an effect produced by multiple relationships, references, and shifts.
SinSaberlo Collective — Fasani, Toro, Barbará, Galante, Conde, Vega, Murat, Galassi and Rodrigo, Rescate.
The result is an exhibition of highly diverse languages, encompassing installation, sculpture, painting, ceramics, robotics, archival materials, performance, and interdisciplinary practices. The works address issues such as memory and territory, reconstruction, the relationship between nature and technology, and the mechanisms by which images are copied and circulated. In several of the projects, the public moves beyond a purely contemplative role to become an active participant in the experience.
Among the nine selected projects are My Bed and the Catastrophe , by Silvina Lischinsky; Essay to Filter a River , by Erick Pertile; Biomimicry Project , by Milagros Waigadt; Monument to Dan Flavin (Act I) , by Fran Stella; Movements of Minimal Matter , by the La Copia Collective, made up of Montaldo, Fernández and Pontón; and Rescue , by the SinSaberlo Collective, made up of Fasani, Toro, Barbará, Galante, Conde, Vega, Murat, Galassi and Rodrigo.
The selection is completed by Cornucopia [ATLAS] by Laura Ojeda Bär; Mesita by Franco Palioff; and Carro Blanco 1990-2003-2026 by Pilar García and Valentín Quintaié. Together, these proposals map out practices in which appropriation and transformation function as tools for reflecting on the present.
Pilar García and Valentín Quintaié, Carro Blanco 1990-2003-2026.
The Biennial also expands its program with three proposals conceived as actions, performances, and spaces for participation. Contraimagen , by Flor Capella; Gente que dice que no sabe dibujar , by Pablo Ramborger; and Biblioteca de copias , by Paula Giorgi, Agustina Girardi, and Corina Arrieta, incorporate other forms of relationship between artist, artwork, and public.
The Biennial proposes the possibility of understanding both concepts as parts of the same process. What today appears to be an individual creation may become tomorrow a shared heritage, while what is presented as the origin may reveal, upon closer examination, the traces of other images, narratives, and experiences. It is within this interplay between repetition and difference that The Echo of a Sound That Was Never Made is situated, a Biennial that transforms the copy not into a mere reproduction, but into a new possibility for creation.
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