Traverso’s practice is rooted in the hum of daily life—fairs, markets, itinerant vendors. Her interest lies in clothing and textiles not simply as material, but as carriers of circulation, of economies, of intimate histories.

Within this context, the exhibition’s title “Aquello que persiste” (that which persists) seems less metaphorical and more vital. What persists is not only the object, but its sedimented social life, its embedded memory.

In one corner of the show, her soft-sculpture textiles hang or fold, resonating with human weight despite their gentle fabrication. The interplay of scale, fabric, and stitching invites one into a tactile reverie: you can almost imagine the fatigue of hands that once sewed, the repeated motions of buying, selling, and re-selling. The works ask: how many bodies did this garment pass through? Which hands folded it, which wrinkle marks speak of wear? As the curator Miguel A. López observes, Traverso “approaches the garments as living traces… she interrupts their movement, creates a pause in which we can feel them as carriers of affects, contradictions and conflicts”.

One of the strengths of the exhibition lies in this bridging of macro and micro: the global flows of used clothes, the second-hand trade, the uneven circuits of production and consumption, and the intimate impulse to collect, to draw, to trace a mark. Traverso’s drawings and notebooks accentuate this: small format, handwritten, dusty-ligatured, as though memory were being sketched in real time. These artefacts function as witnesses to circulation, but also gentler acts of bearing witness.

Yet the exhibition does not remain in melancholic stasis. There is an urgency to the work: to bring into visibility what is usually invisible — the discarded, the used, the passed-through. The textiles gain urgency precisely because they persist; they become acts of survival, of resistance to erasure. In the current museum moment, an institution like MACBA mounting this show signals a broader commitment to forms of labour, memory, and economy often overlooked.

However, one might ask whether the density of reference — to markets, global commodity flows, textiles, circular economies — sometimes overwhelms the visual quiet of the work. At moments, the conceptual scaffolding feels dense, and a viewer unfamiliar with the layering of contexts may struggle to let the textile works simply “be”. That said, the tactile invitation of fabric, of folded bodies, of accumulated scrap, offers its own reward: an embodied encounter with time.

In sum, "Aquello que persiste" is a quietly potent exhibition. Traverso invites us to slow down, to regard the worn, the used, the re-used, and in doing so to feel the traces of lives that linger in cloth and thread. Rather than a triumphalist retrospective, the show is a gesture of testimony. If objects persist, so too do the stories they carry — and within the hushed space of MACBA, we are called to listen.

Curated by Alejandro Tantanian, Andrés Gallina, and Florencia Qualina, the show is structured into eleven distinct “scenes,” each functioning as a temporal capsule that captures a defining moment in the evolution of Argentine experimental performance. The journey begins with the pioneering work of the Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual (CEA) at the Instituto Di Tella, where artists like Roberto Villanueva challenged aesthetic norms through radical multimedia experimentation. These early forays into cross-disciplinary performance set the stage for the subversive energy that would later emerge in venues like the Centro Parakultural, which became a haven for artistic freedom, irreverence, and experimentation.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are works by Griselda Gambaro, whose play El Campo confronts violence and repression with unflinching intensity, and Nacha Guevara, whose renditions of “Esto es teatro” encapsulate the generational spirit of defiance. The show also celebrates Batato Barea, whose performances fused clowning, travesty, and literary references into a singular theatrical language. Collectives such as La Organización Negra and the Parakultural ensemble are also honored, highlighting the collaborative ethos that defined much of Argentina’s experimental theater scene.

The exhibition’s design, conceived by Victoria Noorthoorn and Daniela Thomas, further enhances its impact. Through immersive installations, archival videos, original documents, and evocative objects, the curators craft an environment that invites active engagement. Visitors are not merely observers; they are participants in a narrative that intertwines art, politics, and society. The careful choreography of space and media allows for a multisensory experience that mirrors the dynamism and transgression of the performances themselves.

Ultimately, “Esto es Teatro” is more than an exhibition—it is a celebration of theatrical audacity. It reminds us that theater, at its most vital, is an act of resistance, a declaration of identity, and a testament to the creative freedom that emerges even under constraints. For anyone interested in the intersections of art, history, and social commentary, this exhibition offers a rare and compelling insight into the forces that shaped Argentina’s experimental theater.

The concept

The exhibition invites visitors to rethink the relationship with nature—not as a passive backdrop, but as an active partner in dialogue. Through a combination of bio-art, immersive installations, eco-activist interventions, and technologies such as virtual reality, the project mediates between living matter and contemporary tools.

"Nature after Nature" also revisits ecological genealogies in Romanian art, drawing connections between emblematic works of the past and contemporary artistic expressions. Central to the exhibition are themes of coexistence, environmental responsibility, and new ways of “inhabiting the earth.”

The exhibition brings together artists from different generations and contexts, including Geta Brătescu—a key figure linking art history and ecology—as well as contemporary artists such as Dan Acostioaei, Matei Bejenaru, Josépha Blanchet, Ole Blank, Irina Botea Bucan, Floriama Cândea, Zoița Delia Călinescu, Lorena Cocioni, Giulia Crețulescu, Suzana Dan, Andreea David, Dragoș Dogioiu, Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter, Constantin Flondor, Lavinia German, Cosmin Haiaș, Michael Höpfner, Mălina Ionescu, Iosif Király, Aurora Király, Ana Kun, Kopacz Kund, Andrei Mateescu, Cătălin Marinescu, Radu Marțin, Andreea Medar, Liliana Mercioiu-Popa, Mircea Modreanu, Ana Maria Micu, Marina Oprea, Raluca Paraschiv, Tudor Pătrașcu, Dan Perjovschi, Dan Vișovan/Bogdan Rața, Claudia Retegan, Cătălin Rulea, Sergiu Sas, Ovidiu Toader, Miki Velciov, Mihai Zgondoiu, who explore ecological themes and nature in innovative ways.



Their works incorporate biological materials, living elements, ecological interventions, and installations that engage the senses, alongside technologies that allow visitors to experience nature in a sensitive and interactive manner.

 
Public Programs and Events

On the opening day, October 1, a public debate on art, nature, and ecology took place, featuring curators and several artists and critics, including Raluca Oancea, Cristian Nae, Andrei Mateescu, Raluca Paraschiv, Mirela Stoeac-Vlăduți, and Diana Marincu. The discussion was moderated by Ileana Pintilie and Liliana Mercioiu-Popa.

Throughout the exhibition, guided tours were organized for the general public as well as special tours for families and children, including during the White Night of the Galleries. These tours offered insight into how the participating artists interpret nature, the processes behind their works, and the significance of each piece within the broader curatorial concept.

Perspectives

"Nature after Nature" acts as a platform for reflection on how contemporary art can respond to pressing global issues such as climate change, environmental degradation, and the role of technology in our relationship with the natural world. By creating a shared space for experimentation and dialogue, the exhibition positions nature not merely as an aesthetic theme, but as an active subject.

Moreover, the project encourages public engagement, fostering empathy, ecological awareness, and critical reflection on the environment we inhabit. In a city like Timișoara—with its vibrant cultural scene and engaged community—this exhibition has the potential to generate not only artistic but also social impact.

The Curators & their Statement

Ileana Pintilie is an art historian, curator, and professor at the West University of Timișoara.
Raluca Oancea is a curator, professor at UNArte Bucharest, and project director for Nature after Nature.
Cristian Nae is an art critic, curator, and professor at 'George Enescu' National University of Arts in Iași.

Statement

<<The artistic research project “Nature after Nature” explores the territory between art and ecology, approaching the latter not as a technocratic system or an extractive resource, but as a network of practices of care and coexistence between human and non-human agents. Plants, animals, clouds, and soil are therefore not regarded as mere decorative backdrops, but as ontological and political subjects—co-agents capable of relation, affect, and engagement in both artistic and philosophical processes. Space is fractured into “places of dwelling,” time becomes slow, repetitive, rhizomatic. The perspective is one of continuity and entanglement, which captures, in the spirit of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, both moments of hybridization—when human “flesh” flows into the “flesh” of the world—and moments of “reversibility,” when the landscape represented by the artist seems to gaze back.

Post-anthropocentric ethics intersects with an aesthetics that transcends mere representation, a perspective that may be read through the lens of “remediation” as defined by Bolter & Grusin: a remediation aimed not only at reinterpreting previous artistic forms, but at re-discovering nature itself, filtered through centuries of images, layers of scientific knowledge, and technological mediation. The traditional landscape, as the “old medium” of nature offered to vision, is thus deconstructed through “new media” that sustain contemporary artistic strategies and multisensory, participatory experiences.
“Nature after Nature” opens, in this context, a space of reciprocal listening, inviting us to rethink our relationship with the living world not as an inert backdrop, but as a partner in dialogue. 

From an object of contemplation or an exploitable resource, nature becomes an active agent in the co-production of meaning: bio-art, immersive installations, and eco-activist interventions that integrate living matter and place it in relation to technological instruments and interfaces such as virtual reality. At the same time, the exhibition reconstructs ecological genealogies from Romanian art and brings them into contact with contemporary practices, proposing in Timișoara a way of inhabiting the earth grounded in care and coexistence. Conceived as a living organism, “Nature after Nature” thus brings together transgenerational perspectives that intersect, converse, collaborate, and differentiate themselves within constellations that do not aim to impose a single meaning upon nature, but rather to (re)teach us how to listen to it.>>

The project is organized in partnership with the SIMULTAN Festival, several art universities (UNArte, UAD, UVT), and various local and national cultural institutions.