Exhibition program 2023

Del cielo a casa: Cultura material argentina
March 24–June 12, 2023
Curatorial team: Sebastián Adamo, Leandro Chiappa, Gustavo Eandi, Marcelo Faiden, Carolina Muzi, Verónica Rossi, Juan Ruades, Martín Wolfson, and Paula Zuccotti

The show features a selection of five hundred objects, some of them design pieces and others works of art. Together, they provide an overview of Argentine material culture in dialogue with the country’s political, social, and affective imaginary from the nineteen-forties to the present. It is committed to an ethnographic approach that, beyond authorship or processes, invites us to approach material culture from the uses, customs, rituals and symbolisms that things generate in a given society. Constellations of thematic clusters rather than a layout based on chronology or discipline articulate different ways to visit the show. At the same time, artistic language at once challenges and engages mass-produced objects; it establishes connections with visitors and crosses the limits of utility in order to multiply readings.

Marcela Sinclair: Vía pública
March 24–June 12, 2023
Curator: Nancy Rojas

In dialogue with the design exhibition, Malba presents a solo show of work by Argentine artist Marcela Sinclair (Buenos Aires, 1968) that consists of site-specific interventions, objects, and a public program geared to the production of critical thought and instances of sociability. At play are the avatars of public and private circulation set off by different types of urban and domestic furnishings and their materiality. 

Belkis Ayón: Retrospectiva
July 7–October 9, 2023
Curators: Corina Matamoros y Sandra García Herrera

Malba presents the first retrospective of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (Havana, 1967–1999) ever held in Latin America. A joint production of Malba and the artist’s estate, the show includes a selection of her works and printing plates starting with early experiments in printmaking from late 1986 through the works created before her unexpected death in 1999. All of Belkis Ayón’s art is tied to an existential strain of spirituality that she interprets through the myth of the Abakuá Secret Society. Because of its hermeticism, the religious brotherhood has no iconography. Belkis Ayón was able to translate into visual language a previously unexplored system of thought, thus giving her work a mythical dimension. At stake in her interpretation is a set of values at once universal and specifically Cuban. 

Cecilia Vicuña: Soñar el agua. Recrear la humedad en la tierra
Curator: Miguel A. López
November 3, 2023–February 26, 2024

Malba presents the first retrospective of Chilean poet, visual artist, and feminist activist Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago, 1948) ever held in Argentina. A joint production of Malba and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Santiago de Chile, the show encompasses almost sixty years of production, from 1964 to the present. Emphasis is placed on Chile and the Andes, the lived tradition of pre-Columbian textiles (the Inca quipu, Paracas textiles, and others), feminism and erotism, as well as the struggles of American Indigenous communities. The conceptual pillars of the exhibition are participation and collaboration, the place of the body, and experiential Andean memory through the quipu. It also features paintings, drawings, collages, silkscreens, videos, photographs, textiles, installations, and documentation. Vicuña’s works are not inert objects but forces that mobilize desires and activate collective processes.

The Collection. Tercer ojo. Colección Costantini en Malba
On exhibition throughout 2023
Curator: María Amalia García

Brings together more than 220 iconic works of Latin American art for the first time in a dialogue between the Malba Collection and the one owned by founder Eduardo F. Costantini. Masterpieces by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral, Xul Solar, Joaquín Torres García, Emilio Pettoruti, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Maria Martins, Remedios Varo and Antonio Berni, among others, are on display. Many of these pieces are presented publicly after remaining out of the international circuit for several decades.