Fernanda Aquere

Conference Report. November 2023.

What doesn't happen in museums

To prepare a report on the experiences at the 55th Annual CIMAM Conference, "The Museum, a Shared Creation: Ethics, Social Transformation, and Cultural Legacy," I must reference from where I speak. I am a visual artist, independent curator, and co-founder of the management group Germina Campos in the city of Santa Fe, Argentina. I applied for the CIMAM 2023 grant because the central theme of the conference was the social role of the museum, a topic that resonates with my professional practice. Furthermore, the direction of the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez in Santa Fe invited me in 2022 to serve as curator and coordinator of "Manifestación," a national meeting aimed at intervening in the museological plan of El Rosa, to rethink and discuss new contemporary paradigms, museological practices in Argentina, and deepen the connection between the museum, the artistic community, and the public.

In "Manifestación" -September 2023- institutions of artistic training, local, provincial, national references, and a representative from MUSAC in León, Spain, participated. Personalities from different collectives, communities, and fields of knowledge were invited, as well as museum workers, to imagine possible and desirable futures for the art museum. Three documents -Community, Gender, and Environment- were developed with the aim of proposing future cultural and public policies to the Ministry of Culture of the Province of Santa Fe. In Santa Fe, as in other provinces of Argentina, art museums work with communities on social issues that affect them, through the collective creation of programs and projects, actions that exemplify what Daina Leyton states when she says "museums must create cultural and public policies." CIMAM 2023 expanded the scope of "Manifestación" because reading other contexts allowed me to conclude that, regardless of social, cultural, and economic differences between Argentina and the countries participating in the congress, the issues and concerns of museums are analogous regarding the imbalance in the distribution of wealth, environmental issues, and migrations, among others.

Today more than ever, museums must be political agents that promote the well-being of citizens, and museological practices must guarantee concrete social transformations, addressing the demands of communities. Elvira Espejo Ayca, Director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia, stated that "for communities, the works are subjects," and it is necessary to focus on people in their social and cultural context because that is the new mandate of museums. Along the same lines, Nicolás Testoni, referring to the Ferrowhite Workshop Museum in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, said: "It is not a railroad museum; it is a museum of those who remained on the track"... "It is not a museum of objects; it is a museum of subjects." Museums must urgently shift in this direction; it is necessary to focus on communities and their singularities, on what does not happen in museums, on what does not yet exist but must be built, designed, invented, created, and imagined collectively; that is one of the functions of art, and museums must attend to the critical and proactive gaze of artists.

It is an unavoidable task if changes are sought, to step out of the comfort zone, and artistic practice is the tool and the generative field of knowledge, critical creative thinking, and a transforming instrument of realities and contexts. "The art that makes me get out of bed should have consequences in real life," expressed Marie Hélène Pereira when quoting artist Linda Goode Bryant; similarly, Yto Barrada defined art as a strategy she uses to engage in social practices. Her artistic praxis, like that of Ana Gallardo and the Beauty and Happiness Fiorito collective, challenges me because it is the micropolitics that transform the macropolitics, and it is from this place that I wish to address my artistic curatorial work. Participating in CIMAM 2023 allowed me to reaffirm the ideological framework of my future performance.

Marian Pastor Roces expressed that "artists are braver than museums", I want to have enough courage for my professional practice to generate a social impact in a situated context and allow me to build affective - effective work links to be able to create spaces of resistance that guarantee cultural democracy and the real alliance with the communities, political spaces that promote citizen encounters and participation.

Bio

Fernanda Aquere has a degree in Fine Arts, and is an independent curator, Visual Arts teacher, visual artist, cultural manager and theatre producer.

She was born in San Gregorio, Province of Santa Fe, on 18 June 1968.

She obtained grants from the F.N.A, the Ministry of Culture of Santa Fe and the Fundación Antorchas.

Since 2021 she has been working as external curator at the Museo Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez in the city of Santa Fe as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the institution. In 2022 she was in charge of the curatorship of the activation "Conversación Rosa 100 años" by the artist Ana Gallardo. Currently, together with the museum's team, she is outlining lines of action to debate - in the framework of a meeting - with local, provincial and national actors the museum practice linked to the communities.

In 2023 it participates in "La Médici: Programme of approach to contemporary art" organised by Giro, Chamber of Art Galleries of the Province of Santa Fe.

In 2022 she was invited to host the Programa Moderno Federal, curated by Raúl Flores, curator of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.

She participates as a juror in Provincial and National Salons.

In 2021 she was a member of the jury for the selection of exhibition projects for the Museo Sor Josefa Díaz y Clucellas and the Centro Experimental del Color in the city of Santa Fe.

In 2021 she was curator of the exhibition El paso de los sentidos by María Eugenia Suárez at Galería Delta Espacio and in 2019 of the intervention De Premios y Naufragios by the artist Bruno de Giudice, organised by Grupo Barrio sin Plaza.

In 2020 she participated in "Museos en línea: imaginar museos posibles tras la pandemia" organised by the Secretary of Culture of Santa Fe.

From 2002 to 2020 she was Head of Careers and Cultural Extension at the Provincial School of Visual Arts "Profesor Juan Mantovani" in Santa Fe.

In 2018 and 2019 she was in charge of the artistic-pedagogical laboratory "Los rabdomantes. Entre el deseo y la duda", directed by the team of Cultural Residents of the Museo Provincial Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez.

In 2018 she was invited by the F.N.A. to participate in the "Lab Litoral" as a referent for Santa Fe and Entre Ríos, a meeting with the grant holders that took place at the Museo Provincial Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez.

In 2018 she was in charge of the production, scenography and costumes of the play La Jauría de las Damas, winning play of the Comedia Universitaria de la UNL de Santa Fe. La Jauría de las Damas was selected to represent Argentina at the Festival Internacional de Artes Armenia, in Colombia.

In 2015 she was a member of the panel of judges for the competition for the management position at the Museo Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez and made a professional visit to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MUSAC in León and the Fundación Cerezale Antonino y Cinia in Cerezale (Spain).

In 2007 she was Curator of Interfaces 2007: Santa Fe/ Gral. Roca, a programme run by the Dirección de Artes Visuales de la Nación y del F.N.A. (National Visual Arts Directorate and the F.N.A.).

In 2005 she co-founded the Grupo de Gestión y Producción Cultural Independiente Germina Campos, where she curated exhibitions, publications and created spaces for artistic training, activities she carried out until 2010.

She lives and works in the city of Santa Fe.