Santa Fe Mariana Tellería was selected to represent Argentina in the next edition of the Venice Biennale 2019, with your project “The name of a country”, which will be curated by Florencia Battiti.

It is a “very powerful site specific installation, that makes use of the immense space of the Argentine pavilion in Venice in a very effective way, through seven large-format sculptures, that are not silhouettes or dolls, and that condense the forms of work that the artist has been developing in her career: some tension between nature and culture”, explained Battiti.

As explained by the curator, there is a decision not to advance too many details of the project and maintain the mystery until it is deployed in the Argentine Pavilion, in the monumental Italian arsenals, between 11 May and 24 November next year.

“The title of the work “The name of a country”, is a nod to the first exhibition that the artist from Rufino held in Buenos Aires in the 2009, “an important step in the beginning of your career”, says Battiti, but he clarifies: “It has no allusion to Argentina, it is simply a poetic title. It does not allude to an unknown for the public to find out what country it is or anything similar. It refers to his first solo exhibition in Buenos Aires”.

For the first time, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs implemented the modality of open competition for the selection of the artist who officially represents Argentina, and in which Tellería was the winner.

The jury was chaired by the director of cultural affairs, Ambassador Sergio Baur and composed of Vice Chancellor Daniel Raimondi; Andrés Duprat (director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), Laura Malosetti Costa (of the National Academy of Fine Arts) and the artist Jorge Macchi.