Pharus II

Matilde Marín in Pharus II. Landscapes and Photographic Fictions again embarks on a visual journey that documents and recreates lighthouses of the world. This work illuminates with reddish tones the lighthouses that are the return home - in the reverse journey to Pharus. From the southern hemisphere to the north - now the artist goes from Iceland to the southernmost south of Argentina. In this displacement with documentary images and fictional landscapes Marín presents lighthouses that are not only physical guides at sea, but by their visuality now reveal spaces of fascination and are the occasion to imagine new narratives that revitalise these symbols of memory and history. Laura Malosetti Costa expresses that the lighthouses evoke concepts and narratives such as those of the voyage, shipwreck, tragedy, and are the result of both the artist's experiences and her literary readings. Adriana Musitano analyses the abyssal settings that partially duplicate the lighthouses in their reflections and observes that Marín astonishes with images that create a utopian space by creating photographic fictions that link the landscape of the Salinas Grandes of Argentina with faraway places. The lighthouses and constellations in this ebook illuminate our planet and the planisphere shows them in relation to the cardinal points, seas and continents. Marín narrates his return home and also his trip to Egypt, when he learns about the place where the first lighthouse was, Alexandria. The Lighthouses of affection are added, with photographs of her friends, remembering her.

Matilde Marin (Buenos Aires, 1948) is an Argentine contemporary artist and academic who develops work in multiple disciplines including printmaking, photography and video. Marín has been a visiting professor giving postgraduate seminars at universities in Argentina, Chile and ​​Spain. Fellow of the Institut d'Études Avancées de Nantes, France (2020). She graduated as a sculptor from the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and continued her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich, Switzerland, where she trained in graphic techniques. She began her work on paper in a constant search to break with the traditional techniques of the discipline and since the late nineties she has incorporated photography and video into her artistic practice, creating large-format installations. Since 2008 she is a Full Member of the National Academy of Fine Arts, Argentina and President of that institution for the period 2022-2024. President of the Federico Jorge Klemm Foundation in Buenos Aires, Argentina for the period 2019-2024. Marín has worked and lived in Caracas, Venezuela, Zurich, Switzerland and Washington, USA. She lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Matilde Marín's work has been widely studied in theoretical and critical texts internationally. Her work emerges from a rigorous research process and a critical and reflective argument about the events that leave their mark on humanity and the artist's role as an active witness who records and elaborates reflections on contemporaneity.