Inhabiting root
Walk, observe, smell, feel.
This exhibition asks you to take your own journey through a shared emotional territory. Here, individual experiences, thoughts and processes intertwine to create a collective identity: multifaceted, dynamic and constantly evolving.
The installations that make up this exhibition gather the processes and reflections resulting from a participatory process carried out between February 2025 and March 2026, activated by the exhibition Memories of the land. Leónidas Gambartes.
The first exhibition addressed themes like territory, memory and ritual, all found in Leónidas Gambartes’ work, while inviting the public to share their own reflections on them. From this exchange emerged the installations and tools that now make up Inhabiting roots. Sensory practices in territory.
The exhibition is organised into three areas: earthly, in transit, and sensory.
Terrenal
Tránsito
Sensorial
Ritualidad
In each one, our bodies are invited to actively participate. Matter, the senses and emotions make up the true content of this exhibition, aimed at generating unique experiences rooted in personal memory. The installations are therefore conceived as tools for transmitting different types of knowledge and activating new ones.
Our journey begins, naturally, with Gambartes, who planted the seed of the project. Different participatory activities unfold from his three works – Las Yuyeras II series (1960), Paisaje con figuras (1960) and La Morteada (1952) – reflecting not only the public’s processes but also seeking to extend them.
Altar of territory. At the foot of these pieces sits an altar constructed with elements from the territory – living and non-living things – along with some pieces resulting from them. Here, the circle, as a symbol of shared knowledge in ancestral Indigenous traditions, alludes to the collective dynamics of thought that permeated both the project’s activities and the initial exhibition, also conceived as a catalyst for memories.
Medicinal plants are also present, evoking ancestral knowledge that is part of our culture, even if it is not always in our conscious memory. Their presence is a call to bring back, appreciate and care for this knowledge in our daily lives. Ritual is therefore subtly integrated into everyday gestures, in harmony with Gambartes’ work.
This installation invites us to observe attentively, to become aware of its elements, and to let ourselves be guided by individual memories. Alongside it, a collective herbarium under construction aims to record and share knowledge about medicinal plants, linking it to memories and care rituals.
From the invisible to the visible. In this first space, a documentary video captures the processes of the first phase of the project. Its function is to provide context and, at the same time, reveal links between the actions carried out and the purposes of the exhibition. These links, which started during this initial phase, continue to expand with the participation of new audiences.
Far from offering definitive answers, this exhibition poses questions and conveys experiences that have been fundamental to its creation. At this point, we have to cross a threshold to be able to move forward: a liminal space that the body must traverse while simultaneously being traversed by the questions posed. The installation Traversing is an invitation to play an active role towards reflection and transformation.
Next, we access the third and final space, which we have named “sensory”, although all share this quality to varying degrees. Concepts that emerged collectively during the participatory process materialise and are presented here.
For its part, the Mural of collective memory gathers shared memories, emotions and experiences, creating a common map based on individual ones. The images that make it up come from a creative process that combines artificial intelligence and personal memory. Beyond the visual result, the emphasis is on the experience: on the possibility of creating within the exhibition context and exploring technological tools for social and creative purposes.
Rootedness and uprootedness emerge as a central theme. The need for belonging, to a place or a community, permeates the contemporary context and those who have taken part in the project alike. In response, the installation Roots presents different types of plants that take root in various elements – earth, water, air or bark – offering a reflection on different forms of rootedness and how they respond to our current needs.
With this diversity in mind, the installation leads to an understanding of belonging as a collective and interdependent process: forms of rootedness that are not built in isolation, but in relation, through bonds that connect people to each other and to the territory they inhabit.
This space is crowned by the audiovisual creation A thread of sap, which uses emotion and embodiment to translate the multiplicity of concepts and emotions explored in the participatory activities. Images, sounds and words intertwine to shape the emotional territory and the shared memories that sustain the project.
In keeping with the exhibition as a whole, matter and the sensory dimension take on a more explicit presence here. Sensory challenge is a participatory installation that invites visitors to recognise elements of nature through smell, touch and sight. It is thereby an exercise in conscious perception, in which knowledge is activated through direct experience.
This playful sensory activity engages in dialogue with the collective herbarium in the first space, as well as with the altar of territory, revisiting knowledge linked to plants and shifting it from mere recording and memory to an immediate sensory experience.
Fermata. Pause or interval of musical time that is sustained indefinitely and ends when feelings and emotions indicate it.
And to truly feel, we must stop and listen to our bodies. Therefore, a series of comfortable seats are arranged in the centre of this space, encouraging rest and providing a moment to take a pause. This simple gesture opens up to a state of calm and connection with oneself and with the surroundings. Visitors are invited to allow the experiences awakened during their visit to settle in their body before continuing the tour of the museum, when feelings and emotions indicate it…
Finally, before crossing the liminal space again and returning to Gambartes’ works –perhaps now with a new perspective – the installation Threads poses a closing question. The way to answer it is an essential part of the activity: each person uses strands of wool to trace their own path which, when intertwined with others, forms a visible network. This relational fabric highlights the connections between individuals and reveals the proximity that binds us.
His production during this last stage can be divided by themes into two series: Mito, magia y misterio (“Myth, magic and mystery”) and Figuras y paisajes (“Figures and landscapes”), with the works exhibited here belonging to the latter series. They depict scenes from the daily lives of people living in the periphery, mainly indigenous women working the land, as well as motherhood. His figures are shown hieratically, either standing, sitting or squatting, with a use of colour that ranges between sombre and warm. Despite the mundane nature of these scenes, Gambartes always subtly included the magical world that was typical of the communities represented. From his last stage, we could highlight his experimentation with plasticity, material and language, inventing the pictorial technique cromo al yeso (“plaster chrome”). His direct influences include Antonio Berni, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joaquín Torres García himself and Paul Klee.
His vision problems affected him for life and would also be a major influence in his work. Unable to see a surface larger than 30x40cm without deformation, for works that were larger than his field of vision, the artist painted fragments that were joined together in a final composition, with him never being able to see the whole work at any time.
Obras de la exposición
Know more
(i)realidades leaflet
Exhibition leaflet
Activities program
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of educational proposals based on participation and collaborative artistic creation, in which we invite you to reflect on the central themes raised by his work: memory, identity, territory and ritual.
Works in the exhibition
Exhibition
Memories of the land. Leónidas Gambartes is the exhibition from which the (i)realidades project arose, which provides the main themes for the research project. The exhibition is dedicated to Leónidas Gambartes (1909-1963, Argentina), an artist-magician, who embodies spiritual essence and indigenous rituality in his themes and pictorial processes, making visible what cannot be seen by the naked eye, but that is latent in the reality that surrounds them. He uses telluric aspects, relating to the land and the past of its inhabitants, as a starting point. After beginning by creating the series Cartones de humorismo (“Humorous Cartoons”, 1937 and 1941) and Dibujos oníricos (“Dream Drawings”, 1942 and 1945), in which all these original and identifying elements of the land and its beliefs were already present, Gambartes spent years alternating his creations between these two worlds: the visible and the invisible; between washerwomen, yuyeras (medicine women), mothers and conspirators, peasants, mythoforms and gualicheras (artesans).
