"Not Me": Subject to Change

“Not Me”: Subject to Change is the ninth edition of the CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Exhibition, celebrating emerging and mid-career contemporary artists from Latin America. This year’s exhibition features newly commissioned works by Eduardo Abaroa, Francisca Aninat, Julieta Aranda, Tamar Guimarães, Glexis Novoa, Daniela Ortiz, Marta María Pérez Bravo, and Marisa Rubio. The artworks—including sculptures, installations, drawings, performances, and videos—explore various representations of the body, ranging from subtle to overt and from commanding to intangible.

The exhibition’s title is loosely inspired by Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory of the first “not my possession,” which refers to a transitional object that helps a child understand their body as an independent entity. This transition marks a shift from a sense of supremacy—where the child believes it can fulfill its needs at will—to a shared world filled with successes and disillusionments in the quest for control over desires.

In this context, the transitional object—whether space or experience—facilitates understanding the interplay between inner and outer experiences. The title reflects how artists convey and navigate bodily experiences within an increasingly complex contemporary landscape characterized by rapid changes, shifting boundaries, and evolving timelines.

The exhibition moves between explorations of the body’s influence on objects, as seen in Abaroa’s sculpture composed of tools designed for human use, and the creation of an idealized spectator, as in Novoa’s drawings and performances tailored for a physically challenged dancer. In “Not Me”: Subject to Change, the body assumes a staged presence, from Rubio’s invented characters who navigate the real world through performance to Pérez Bravo’s video installations that create poetic reflections on transience and intangibility. Guimarães’ installation features a film crew striving for silence on set, with their unseen efforts serving as a testament to the faith in collective endeavors that aim to bring forth the unrealized.

This theme of collective desire underpins Aranda’s investigation of the infinite monkey theorem, reflecting on the latent potential of narratives and continuing her exploration of circulating information. The politicized body is central to the works of Aninat and Ortiz, whose approaches—one employing fragmentation and reconstruction and the other emphasizing the power of disclosure—underscore the precariousness of past and present social and political systems.

Artists

Eduardo Abaroa (Mexico), Francisca Aninat (Chile), Julieta Aranda (Mexico, Germany, USA), Tamar Guimarães (Brazil, Denmark), Glexis Novoa (Cuba, USA), Daniela Ortiz (Peru, Spain), Marta María Perez Bravo (Cuba, Mexico) and Marisa Rubio (Argentina).