Mariana Telleria to Represent Argentina at 2019 Venice Biennale

Mariana Telleria (b. 1979, Rufino, Santa Fe) will represent Argentina at the 58th Venice Biennale, running from May 11 to November 24, 2019. Her exhibition, titled "El nombre de un país" (The Name of a Country), curated by Florencia Battiti, was selected from 68 proposals submitted to a competition organized by Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Directorate of Cultural Affairs. The project comprises seven monumental sculptures described as a "punk Frankenstein bestiary," forming an archive of desacralized senses where religious iconography coexists with objects from popular culture, fashion, trash, spectacle, and nature on a horizontal hierarchy. Telleria states her interest in working from the form of individual things, highlighting that the only natural element is the chaotic coexistence of living and inert objects, culture and nature, order and destruction. The pavilion is located at the Sale d'Armi in the Arsenale. The 2019 Biennale features a notably high number of female artists, including Renate Bertlmann (Austria), Eva Rothschild (Ireland), Cathy Wilkes (UK), Laure Prouvost (France), Charlotte Prodger (Scotland), Shirley Tze (Hong Kong), Chiara Fumai and Liliana Moro (Italy), Anna K.E. and Shu Lea Cheang (Georgia and Taiwan), Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir/Shoplifter (Iceland), Larissa Sansour (Denmark), Danica Dakić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Nujoom Alghanem (UAE), and İnci Eviner (Turkey).