BIENALSUR in Mar del Plata: What if the birds stopped singing?

This cell phone will stop working when I no longer need it because I can buy a better one; just as species that failed to adapt in evolutionary history, becoming extinct, gave way to the fittest.

Progress, a typical ideal of modernity, is called into question in Fragmenting Obsolescence. Silent Spring , the group exhibition marking the arrival of BIENALSUR 2025 at the MAR Museum in Mar del Plata. And birds, those creatures that connect prehistory with the present, are the guides, pointing out problems and metaphors for different points of view .

The Silent Spring of the title, inspired by a 1962 book by Rachel Carson, referred to the American researcher's prediction about the expanding use of pesticides: the birds no longer sing . Reality surpassed her imagination, and artists, more than ever, are gripped by these concerns. Since the last edition of the Biennial, works addressing these concerns have multiplied both in quantity and perspective.

Silent Spring is the first in a series of exhibitions under the umbrella of Fragmenting Obsolescence . “It brings together the work of a group of artists who work with contemporary imagery linked to the political, social, and ecological spheres, challenging the idea of obsolescence—that things or matter perish,” curator Clarisa Appendino stated prior to the opening on a freezing Saturday afternoon.

The exhibition occupies the lobby of the MAR Museum and a full room with the work of 10 local and international artists , among whom unexpected intersections and coincidences emerge. "They share a political vision about how we think about connections with the external, the perception of materiality where the expiration understood as productive must be revisited," adds the curator.

Minutes later, the exhibition was inaugurated as BIENALSUR returned to Km 383 of its transnational tour, which will visit more than 70 cities on five continents by the end of the year. "If you thought we were crazy, you're right," joked Aníbal Jozami , general director of BIENALSUR, accompanied by Diana Wechsler , artistic director of the Biennial and Appendino.

They were received by the director of the MAR Museum, Ezequiel Pérez Sáenz , and the provincial Undersecretary of Culture, Victoria Onetto , who highlighted the participation of the Enrique Udaondo Provincial Museum Complex, in Luján, in this fifth edition.

“Despite the dystopian situations and ways of living that recur, several venues stated that they wanted to take a stand for the things worth living for, a trend that gives me a lot of hope,” Diana Wechsler told Clarín .

A monumental installation by Fernando Docampo , a Mar del Plata artist who emigrated to Australia as a child, opens the exhibition. Giant-sized phrases, made from colorful textiles, hang from the building's ceiling, using their own alphabet; everything refers to the school environment. And it stems from the artist's investigations into the construction of a nation through the values taught in the classroom and the inclusion of foreign species. Just as Sarmiento did when he promoted sparrows from London and eucalyptus trees to "complete" the Pampas plain.

A large painting by Juan Reos welcomes visitors into the gallery. With a 19th-century naturalistic tone, National Bird Concert No. 9 portrays an orchestra of national birds in a single scene. "I call it a federal utopian fantasy, a gathering of different things singing in harmony," the artist told Clarín . The scene is set in the Pampas, the center of the imaginary country.

Observing its details, you perceive the soundscape that built from the chirping of birds, obsolete objects such as electronic devices and the call of the sharpener, to reflect on how we remember sounds.

Flying over as a form of viewing has its downside in the desire to control satellite views and the black holes found on Google Maps. Florencia Levy 's work, satellite images of rare earth mining sites in southern Mongolia, where signs of devastation can be seen, is observed from that same perspective: the video is at ground level.

He shares his perspective on Jesu Antuña 's work on the plans of the most recent private housing developments, with their promise of designed nature . Presented in vibrant colors, in El salto de las ranas, the sinuous forms highlight their rampant artificiality.

Strange Forces , another work by the artist with a more poetic profile, extracts and amplifies the birds included in these architectural renderings: the result is creatures that do not resemble any species , and he tests them with letters to "researchers" from other disciplines through an exchange of letters.

In the center of the room, the installation by São Paulo-born artist Andre Komatsu , specially designed for BIENALSUR, dominates and expands. This unstable structure, built with scaffolding, links objects with chains, manifesting balances of symbolic power.

Work gloves vs. pencils, chessboards, hammers, printed newspapers, machetes, and a copy of Michel Foucault 's Microphysics of Power . A contrast of materials and power.

“Since the pandemic, we've been thought of as binary beings, which seems to me to be a control plan to stop us from being critical, and I'm trying to fight against that,” Andre Komatsu, who participates in art and activism collectives in Brazil, told Clarín . For example, the Reocupa Gallery , located in a squatted building in São Paulo.

Lamb of God , a video installation by Spaniard Max de Esteban that uses disturbing images to analyze the consequences of genetic mutation. Sandra Guascone 's bird drawings, Márcio Vilela 's chromatic poetry, and another series by Juan Reos, featuring cloud shapes that seem to conceal a coded message.

Using 3 cubic meters of sand from Mar del Plata, Mariana de Matteis, from Rosario, recreated a disturbing piece in which objects of diverse origin emerge from a mound, from organic waste to electronic devices and basic geometric shapes that add to the strangeness . "It's a fragment of the fossilized landscape, a suspended temporality, a quest to perpetuate the moment," the artist defined her installation.

From a distance it looks like a pile of sand; if you look closely, you can detect objects that are either emerging or sinking, in a scene that will change as the sand dries, while seagulls fly over it. From utopia to dystopia,