As above, so below. Sky and earth. All the landscapes we know, the paths we walk, the objects we utilize, the stories that belong to us, but also the magic and the mystery that set us in motion. Is it possible to simulate these experiences? The exercise would be to choose and compose an image-altar with our treasures. We could select the small things, the minimal stories. As if behind or inside those simple wonders hid an immense force that only each one of us can see.

We can get to know Julieta Anaut through her works, precise, enigmatic, beautiful. Each composition gifts us a testimony of her journey. Territories of the Argentine road she inhabited, memories that move her, characters that surprise her and a nature she both adores and longs for. She offers us her body to remind us that we exist and we are here. In between sky and earth, here we are. Her figure gifts us serenity, she doesn’t interrupt us with her gaze. She allows us to enter her narration without forcing the meaning. Unintentionally, she represents the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Maybe because those memories have a fond and intimate magic, but also because that’s how she needs to remember them.

Her work is a great ritual: the recording, the selection of objects, the photoperformance, the final assembly. This exercise is the heart of her artistic practice; Julieta trains her spirituality along the whole process. The result are poems that work as prayer cards of her life. However, she says they reflect a longing for something she doesn’t have, a religiosity she lacks. If we connect with the images we perceive the opposite, a poetic conquest of her environment, of nature, of her body, of worship. We can recognize similarities or reverberations of her own, guess her journey, her fears and fantasies. 

Maybe without knowing, Julieta tempts us to practice and compose a narration that tells us who we are, where we are, what we desire. This way longing isn’t an abstraction, but a possible habit that gives us back a sort of faith in the enchantment of those strange, luminous, everyday moments of our own. We visually rehearse the sacred and the mundane of treasuring all the places, the objects and the mysteries in which we are.

Lucía Seijo, Buenos Aires, 2019.

Curatorial text of the series for the solo exhibition “Simulations of an unknown nostalgia” at MNBA Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén, 2019.