Argentinian Art
Fernanda Laguna at MALBA: Art, Affect, and Everyday Life
March 23, 2026 | nadiaevangelina
The retrospective Mi corazón es un imán 1992–2025 (My heart is a magnet) by Fernanda Laguna at MALBA unfolds as both an archive and an affective landscape, resisting the conventional logic of institutional display. Rather than imposing a linear narrative, the exhibition (curated by Miguel A. López) embraces dispersion, intimacy, and accumulation, bringing together around 200 works produced over three decades. Paintings, drawings, collages, textiles, installations, writings, and personal documents coexist without hierarchy, foregrounding Laguna’s refusal to separate art from life.
Laguna’s practice has long been described as “indisciplinary,” moving fluidly between visual art, literature, activism, and self-managed cultural initiatives. This exhibition makes that hybridity tangible: handwritten notes appear alongside fragile objects; decorative motifs coexist with urgent political gestures. The result is less a retrospective in the traditional sense than a porous constellation of gestures, where the personal becomes a mode of collective address.
What emerges most forcefully is Laguna’s sustained commitment to the everyday. Her aesthetic, often associated with precarious materials, informal mark-making, and a deliberately “naïve” visual language, operates as a critical position within the history of Argentine contemporary art. Hearts, phrases, and modest surfaces function not as decorative excess but as magnetic points of affect, drawing the viewer into an unstable field between tenderness and discomfort.
The curatorial structure, organized into multiple sections, situates her work within broader socio-political transformations since the 1990s. Yet it avoids didacticism. Instead, it allows contradictions to remain visible: intimacy and militancy, vulnerability and humor, craft and conceptualism. Laguna’s long-standing engagement with collaborative spaces, most notably Belleza y Felicidad, resonates throughout, positioning her oeuvre within a network of shared practices rather than as an isolated artistic trajectory.
There is also a notable emphasis on communication. As López suggests, many works originate in the impulse to “write or send a message,” transforming private expression into public gesture. This dynamic destabilizes the viewer’s role: one does not simply observe but is implicated, addressed, even unsettled by the directness of Laguna’s voice.
Ultimately, Mi corazón es un imán succeeds in articulating Laguna’s singular position within Latin American contemporary art. It neither monumentalizes nor domesticates her practice. Instead, it preserves its volatility, its capacity to oscillate between fragility and insistence, while reaffirming her work as a space where affect, politics, and everyday life remain inseparable.
 |
| MALBA |
Laguna’s practice has long been described as “indisciplinary,” moving fluidly between visual art, literature, activism, and self-managed cultural initiatives. This exhibition makes that hybridity tangible: handwritten notes appear alongside fragile objects; decorative motifs coexist with urgent political gestures. The result is less a retrospective in the traditional sense than a porous constellation of gestures, where the personal becomes a mode of collective address.
What emerges most forcefully is Laguna’s sustained commitment to the everyday. Her aesthetic, often associated with precarious materials, informal mark-making, and a deliberately “naïve” visual language, operates as a critical position within the history of Argentine contemporary art. Hearts, phrases, and modest surfaces function not as decorative excess but as magnetic points of affect, drawing the viewer into an unstable field between tenderness and discomfort.
 |
| MALBA |
The curatorial structure, organized into multiple sections, situates her work within broader socio-political transformations since the 1990s. Yet it avoids didacticism. Instead, it allows contradictions to remain visible: intimacy and militancy, vulnerability and humor, craft and conceptualism. Laguna’s long-standing engagement with collaborative spaces, most notably Belleza y Felicidad, resonates throughout, positioning her oeuvre within a network of shared practices rather than as an isolated artistic trajectory.
There is also a notable emphasis on communication. As López suggests, many works originate in the impulse to “write or send a message,” transforming private expression into public gesture. This dynamic destabilizes the viewer’s role: one does not simply observe but is implicated, addressed, even unsettled by the directness of Laguna’s voice.
 |
| MALBA |
Ultimately, Mi corazón es un imán succeeds in articulating Laguna’s singular position within Latin American contemporary art. It neither monumentalizes nor domesticates her practice. Instead, it preserves its volatility, its capacity to oscillate between fragility and insistence, while reaffirming her work as a space where affect, politics, and everyday life remain inseparable.
"Mi corazón es un imán 1992–2025"
Location: Malba, Junín 1930, Av. Pres. Figueroa Alcorta 3415, C1425CLA CABA, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Opening Date: 13th March 2026
End Date: 25th May 2026
Working hours: Wednesday- Monday: 12pm to 8pm
Official website:
Mentioned Artist:
Fernanda Laguna
