Contemporary Argentina
Women in design: history redrawn at PROA Foundation
April 17, 2025 | nadiaevangelina
The exhibition "¡Aquí estamos! Mujeres en el diseño 1900-hoy" (Here we are! Women in Design 1900-today) at PROA Foundation proposes a necessary and urgent journey through the (often invisible) contribution of women to the field of design. It is not a condescending or didactic exhibition in a scholastic tone; rather, its power lies in the conviction that these creators are not “arriving” or “gaining a place” but have always been there. The title is an interpellation: an affirmation, a taking of a position.
Curated by Viviane Stappmanns, Nina Steinmüller, and Susanne Graner, the exhibition avoids falling into a strict chronology or closed categories. Instead, it unfolds a fluid narrative, traversed by the crossover between industrial, graphic, textile, and experimental design. From the pioneering pieces of the Bauhaus, where figures such as Marianne Brandt challenged the margins of what was permitted, to the audacious contemporaneity of Latin American designers, the tour becomes a constellation of gestures, materials, struggles, and forms.
What is remarkable is that many of these works do not need to speak explicitly of gender to be political: the mere fact of occupying a historically masculinized space is already a statement. And yet, many do so with humor, anger, or subtlety through objects, textiles, furniture, or graphics that reformulate the link between body, domesticity, public space, and production. Criticism of traditional roles is not a subtext but a constitutive part of many of the proposals.
One of the curatorial successes is the diversity of visual and cultural languages represented. The show is not limited to established European or North American figures; it includes voices from the global south, designers who operate from adverse or peripheral contexts, whose works dialogue with local, ecological, or community issues. In that sense, "¡Aquí estamos!" is a historical vindication and an intervention in the present: it makes visible what the canon still refuses to include.
The montage is accompanied by sobriety, letting the pieces breathe without imposing themselves. The visit provokes, excites, and makes us uncomfortable at times. It forces us to rethink design not as a “neutral” discipline but as a field crossed by social, economic, and symbolic tensions.
In short, "¡Aquí estamos!" is an exhibition that is discomforted with elegance, celebrates without solemnity, and reconstructs with precision a hitherto ignored genealogy. And above all, it is a call: it is not enough to look, we must rewrite the history of design, this time with all the names.
 |
| PROA Foundation |
What is remarkable is that many of these works do not need to speak explicitly of gender to be political: the mere fact of occupying a historically masculinized space is already a statement. And yet, many do so with humor, anger, or subtlety through objects, textiles, furniture, or graphics that reformulate the link between body, domesticity, public space, and production. Criticism of traditional roles is not a subtext but a constitutive part of many of the proposals.
 |
| PROA Foundation |
The montage is accompanied by sobriety, letting the pieces breathe without imposing themselves. The visit provokes, excites, and makes us uncomfortable at times. It forces us to rethink design not as a “neutral” discipline but as a field crossed by social, economic, and symbolic tensions.
In short, "¡Aquí estamos!" is an exhibition that is discomforted with elegance, celebrates without solemnity, and reconstructs with precision a hitherto ignored genealogy. And above all, it is a call: it is not enough to look, we must rewrite the history of design, this time with all the names.
 |
| PROA Foundation |
“Aquí estamos! Mujeres en el diseño 1900-hoy"
Location: PROA Foundation, Av. Don Pedro de Mendoza 1929, C1169 CABA, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Opening Date: 12th April 2024
End Date: 29th June 2024
Working hours: Wednesday-Sunday: 12pm to 19 pm
Official website: https://www.proa.org/esp/
