Julieta Anaut

Simulations of an unknown nostalgia

Text by Lucía Seijo

As above, so below. Sky and earth. All the landscapes we know, the paths we walk, the objects we utilize, the stories that belong to us, but also the magic and the mystery that set us in motion. Is it possible to simulate these experiences? The exercise would be to choose and compose an image-altar with our treasures. We could select the small things, the minimal stories. As if behind or inside those simple wonders hid an immense force that only each one of us can see.

We can get to know Julieta Anaut through her works, precise, enigmatic, beautiful. Each composition gifts us a testimony of her journey. Territories of the Argentine road she inhabited, memories that move her, characters that surprise her and a nature she both adores and longs for. She offers us her body to remind us that we exist and we are here. In between sky and earth, here we are. Her figure gifts us serenity, she doesn’t interrupt us with her gaze. She allows us to enter her narration without forcing the meaning. Unintentionally, she represents the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Maybe because those memories have a fond and intimate magic, but also because that’s how she needs to remember them.

Her work is a great ritual: the recording, the selection of objects, the photoperformance, the final assembly. This exercise is the heart of her artistic practice; Julieta trains her spirituality along the whole process. The result are poems that work as prayer cards of her life. However, she says they reflect a longing for something she doesn’t have, a religiosity she lacks. If we connect with the images we perceive the opposite, a poetic conquest of her environment, of nature, of her body, of worship. We can recognize similarities or reverberations of her own, guess her journey, her fears and fantasies.

Maybe without knowing, Julieta tempts us to practice and compose a narration that tells us who we are, where we are, what we desire. This way longing isn’t an abstraction, but a possible habit that gives us back a sort of faith in the enchantment of those strange, luminous, everyday moments of our own. We visually rehearse the sacred and the mundane of treasuring all the places, the objects and the mysteries in which we are.

(Lucía Seijo, Buenos Aires, 2019)

About the Artist

Artist Website

She was born in Patagonia, Argentina, in 1983. A visual artist graduated from IUPA Instituto Universitario Patagónico de las Artes, Argentina; Did a Master in Combined Artistic Languages at UNA Universidad Nacional de las Artes, CABA, Argentina.

Her works have been exhibited in museums and cultural venues such as the Argentine Consulate in New York (USA), AMA Art Museum of the Americas (Washington, USA), IILA Italo-Latin American Institute (Rome, Italy), Foto Club Uruguayo (Montevideo, Uruguay), Centro Cultural Recoleta (CABA, Argentina), Casa del Bicentenario (CABA, Argentina), ArtexArte Fundación Alfonso y Luz Castillo (CABA, Argentina), MNBA Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Neuquén, Argentina), MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Salta, Argentina), Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Pettoruti (La Plata, Argentina), among others.

In 2020, Ediciones ArtexArte published the book entitled “My own, the adoration, the wandering” which compiles all her photograph series produced from 2008 to 2020.

She won the Art and Technology Acquisition Award in the “2019 Céfiro Photography Competition”, a Mention in the “2018 National Academy of Fine Arts Ayerza Photography Award”, First Prize in the “18th Rio Negro Visual Arts Exhibition 2013” and the Stimulus Award in the “2008 ArtexArte Photography Biennial”. She has received the creation scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes in 2012. She has been finalist in the “109 Salón Nacional 2020-21”, “Itaú Cultural Award 2014”.

Her videos have been shown in museums such as MALBA, MACBA and CCEBA in Buenos Aires. She has participated in video art festivals in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, USA, Spain, Italy, France and Greece.

She lives and works in Buenos Aires and Río Negro, Argentina.