Natalia Lipovetzky

Participant

What you will not see in Europe

When I returned to my hometown after my first trip to Europe, I felt an intense need to gaze at my place, to walk through it, to smell it. San Miguel de Tucumán. From abroad, I had been able to confirm that not all places are the same, that each one of them has particular characteristics that make it unique. What I had so much yearned for was the uniqueness of my city, and that was the only thing I was able to see while I did not have it during my stay in Europe.

On my return I discovered new small daily events that are typical of Tucumán, and I started taking photographs of them in a small postcard format (13 cm by 19 cm).
At the same time as I was collecting urban images in a third-world Latin-American city, Argentina went through the self-imposed exile of young people who staked their economic hopes for the future in Europe. After a year had passed, many of the people I used to know had left. Eleven very close friends decided to emigrate, and have not returned to this day.
What you will not see in Europe arises from this experience. I choose a photograph I think will suit the purpose, I glue a flexible magnet to its back and I send it to somebody from Tucumán who has settled down in Europe, together with a handwritten letter in which I explain my project. I think that to receive a letter from an unknown correspondent opens new doors for circulation of my work beyond a mere exchange among friends. Naturally, I am also thinking about a circuit in the field of art: These photographs, with their attached magnets, also imply a journey, just like that of the exiles, but I cannot control it. I don't know what might happen.

Nevertheless, it is not my intention to grow melancholic, or to show the poverty and precariousness in which we live. My purpose is to bring back the memory of those things that could never be seen or found in Europe. I try to recover, even with a sense of humour, the daily events that make up our culture and that no other inhabitant of this planet could genuinely call his own.

Facsimile of an e-mail sent to Natalia Lipovetzky by Máximo, a Tucumanian living in Berlin, Germany, thanking her for the letter and magnets he had received from her.

 

Natalia Lipovetzky Artist, born in 1975 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Currently lives and works in Tucumán. In 1999 she got a Plastic Arts Licenciate Degree with a specialization in painting at Tucumán National University. 1998- Selected for "Encuentros de producción y análisis de obras para jóvenes artistas del NOA" run by Jorge Gumier Maier and Claudia Fontes and organized by Fundación Antorchas and T.N.U. 2002: "Eclipse", an installation with artist Ferrari in Córdoba. She also participated in "Kermés del Arte", an artistic event coordinated by Rolo Juárez at Plaza Urquiza, Tucumán. Since 2001 she has been a member of Tucumán artists' group "El Ingenio", with whom she has taken part in collective exhibitions such as "Colectivos y Asociados" at Casa América, Madrid, Spain, and in an exhibition held at the Arias Rengel Museum of Fine Arts, in Salta, that same year. Among her individual exhibitions, the following are worth noting: "Llovido del cielo", 2002; "13,879", an installation presented at Casa Club, Tucumán, in 2000; "J'ai des fourmis dans les jambes", an individual drawing and painting exhibition at Casa Club, Tucumán, 1999, and "Aquarela 1994", her first individual exhibition at Salón Austral, Tucumán. She takes part in various salons in Tucumán. E-mail : apenastresmil@hotmail.com