Gabriela Acha
For the past 15 years I have been collecting minerals, antiques, and fossils. These pieces are the starting point of my process. I have reflected about the methodologies belonging to Sciences and Art to approach nature as an object of study. I am part of an Argentinean group of artists, researchers and scientific illustrators called Expedición. Together we work connecting Art and Natural Sciences.
My primary mode of production is sculpture, deriving in performance and installation. This also involves a process of documentation that relies on photography, drawing, video, 3d modelling and writing.
I have worked in cooperation with different institutions such as the National Museums of Natural History from Uruguay and Chile, the National Academy of Science of Cordoba, Argentina, and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of Florence, Italy. In 2020 I will develop projects in cooperation with the Museal system of Florence.
Lately, I have been interested in the notion of museum, as a colonial institution where a discourse is built. I developed a process focused on the concepts herstory and decolonial thinking.
Every Museum Is A Trap
For the graduation I decided to develop an action with one of my mobile museums in the Haagse Bos, a forest in The Hague. The performance could be a ritual and the spoken word the medium. My body is present together with elements that belong or remind me of people that I adore and that inspires me great respect. Through this action I generate a dialogue between pieces to considerate how memory is constructed. I wonder what is remembered, why is it remembered and what is not. I reflect upon non represented perspectives, including pieces that depict the resistance of subaltern knowledge and tradition.