New Genres: alchemy

Myth, Blood, and Memory: Inside Laura Códega’s Sensory World

June 30, 2025 | nadiaevangelina

Walking into “Un perfume de amor, sangre y nervios” (A scent of love, blood, and nerves) at Recoleta Cultural Center is like entering an alchemical chamber of pigments, textures, and fragmented histories. This is Laura Códega’s first major institutional solo show, curated by Carla Barbero, featuring over thirty works created between 2010 and 2024.

The exhibition is drenched in a deep pink hue that resonates with the sensuality and violence of the pieces. Códega uses unconventional pigments—banana, lemon, tar—on repoussé metal, leather, collage, and video. Her monsters, saints, and warriors move between the grotesque and the mythical, conjuring images of a soldier-skeleton fighting serpents or a bishop-menaced chimera with theatrical power.

Códega draws from pre-Columbian cosmology, medieval iconography, and Latin American muralism, yet everything feels fiercely personal. Her work resists the colonial canon by reviving marginalized visions—pagan, epic, and feminist. The materials themselves carry political force: burned pumpkin and crushed fruit evoke devoured bodies and territories.

Some of the strongest moments are sculptural: gourds split open like corpses suggest children killed in the War of the Triple Alliance, transforming organic matter into testimony. Barbero describes the works as “epic battles painted with lemon and tar,” a phrase that captures the balance of intimacy and fury at the core of Códega’s practice.

This visceral intensity is amplified by the dialogue the exhibition establishes with Argentina’s older print tradition. Works by Abraham Vigo and Adolfo Bellocq—associated with the early 20th‑century Artistas del Pueblo—have been loaned by the National Museum of Engraving. Their socially aware prints sit in silent resonance with Códega’s contemporary struggles: both artists sought alternative narratives beyond academic norms.

While abundant materials and references can feel overwhelming, this excess is deliberate. Códega’s world resists clean narratives. It asks viewers to feel with the skin, not just the mind. “Un perfume de amor, sangre y nervios” is a triumph of texture and intensity—an invitation to descend into forgotten myths and rise with new sensitivities. Códega emerges not as a newcomer, but as a fully formed voice, finally given the room she has long deserved.